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Criterion
Paper illustration of Futures Wheel with its method-specific working model.
Systems Thinking
Futures Wheel
Anonymous individual judgments pass through feedback loops to form a distribution.
Decision Making
Delphi Method
Paper illustration for Trade-off Analysis.
Decision Making
Trade-off Analysis
Decision Tree method illustration showing its working structure
Decision Making
Decision Tree
Purposedifferent
The Futures Wheel helps explore the consequences of a decision, a trend, or a strategic move in a structured way. It makes visible which first, second, and third-order effects could arise from an event.When knowledge is distributed and direct dominance should be avoided, groups quickly fall under the sway of their opinion leaders. The Delphi Method gathers assessments iteratively and gradually brings expert judgments closer together.With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects.For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch.
Complexitydifferent
MediumHighMediumMedium
Timedifferent
60-120 min1-4 Wochen45-120 min30-90 min
Participantsdifferent
3-106-30 Experten2-81-6
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncAsyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Futures Wheel, Consequence Chains, Strategic SignalsExpert Forecast, Consensus Range, Assumption NotesTrade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted DownsidesDecision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List
Tagsno overlap
ForesightSystems thinkingSignals
ForecastingExpertsDecisionStrategy
TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions
DecisionTreeOptions
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