The working reference for the Decision First method: name the choice, earn the evidence, install the rule. Written for operations researchers, decision scientists, supply chain analysts, and machine learning practitioners whose models are supposed to change what the company does.https://thedecisionproduct.com/enhttps://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/forty-seven-slides/https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/forty-seven-slides/The most common outcome of competent technical work is a meeting that agrees the work was thorough and an operating process that continues exactly as before. The cause is not effort, and more effort will not fix it.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTdecisionsoperationsanalyticsAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/analysis-is-not-the-product/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/analysis-is-not-the-product/The founding claim. A study that cannot change which alternative is chosen is decoration, however accurate it is, and most technical weeks produce exactly that.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/complexity-pays-rent/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/complexity-pays-rent/A ladder from a count to an optimization model. Start at the bottom and climb only when a lower rung cannot settle a claim that is carrying weight. Heuristics are first-class.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/cut-and-prune/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/cut-and-prune/Draw the tree, check that the branches neither overlap nor leave a gap, then mark every branch that cannot change the ranking and leave it alone. The pruning is the point.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/diagnosis-then-recommendation/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/diagnosis-then-recommendation/Name the mechanism you could intervene on, then commit to one of the named alternatives. Teams that skip the first produce guesses; teams that skip the second produce reports.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/disagreement/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/disagreement/When the room pushes back, the instinct is to go do more analysis. That instinct is usually wrong and always expensive. Name the fight, agree the criteria, and let people change their minds cheaply.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/economics-before-metrics/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/economics-before-metrics/Put consequences in units that bite. House metrics are not consequences, and a metric treated as an objective will quietly decide the ranking for you.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/install-the-rule/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/install-the-rule/A decision that cannot enter an operating process is unfinished. Owner, cadence, thresholds, the unsure case, a priced exception path, feedback, and a revisit date that is a date.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/interests-not-positions/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/interests-not-positions/A position is what someone says they want. An interest is what they are actually protecting. Arguing against a position that stands in for an unstated interest cannot succeed.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/invent-the-alternatives/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/invent-the-alternatives/The alternatives are not given, they are made. A ranking of a bad menu is still a ranking of a bad menu, and no amount of evidence rescues a list that never contained the commitment you should have considered.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/name-the-choice/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/name-the-choice/A complete choice is a sentence, not a topic. It carries alternatives of the same kind, a person who can commit, a date the choice goes stale, and the uncertainty that will still be there when it is made.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/problem-decision-outcome/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/problem-decision-outcome/Three different objects that arrive mashed together in almost every brief. Splitting them is cheap, unglamorous, and resolves more confusion than any other single move.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/refuse-the-first-brief/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/refuse-the-first-brief/Four questions to get answered before you spend serious time, what to do when you cannot get them answered, and how to decline a request without becoming the obstacle.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-a-rule-is-made-of/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-a-rule-is-made-of/Five moving parts: the state it can see, the decision it may take, the information that will arrive, the transition to the next state, and what it accumulates. Most analysis specifies two and discovers the other three in production.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-they-do-if-you-fail/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-they-do-if-you-fail/Every party in the room has a walk-away, whether or not they have said it. Those walk-aways are the alternatives that remain if your work produces nothing, and a ranking that ignores them ranks a meeting rather than a company.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-would-change-the-ranking/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/what-would-change-the-ranking/The question that does more work than any framework, because it cannot be answered with a chart. Name the quantity, the threshold, and what it would cost to find out.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/who-undoes-this/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/who-undoes-this/Locally optimal, globally stupid. Find the adjacent team that will dislike your recommendation if it works as designed, and go ask them what they will do about it.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/work-backward/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/work-backward/Write the candidate ranking before you open a notebook, then the claims that could kill it, then the cheapest test that could change your mind. Data last.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/writing-the-decision/https://thedecisionproduct.com/method/writing-the-decision/Lead with the pick. The opening and the pyramid are one structure. Headings are full sentences that carry the argument, and layers serve different readers without dumbing anything down.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTmethodAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/your-model-is-not-the-answer/https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/your-model-is-not-the-answer/Model quality is an intermediate artifact, and presenting it as the deliverable is the central structural error in applied data science. The remedy is not clearer communication. It is a different definition of finished.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdata sciencedecisionseconomicsAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/refusing-the-brief/https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/refusing-the-brief/The first request is almost never the decision. Absorbing it anyway is the most expensive habit in technical work, and the standard objection to pushing back has a specific, practical answer.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTbriefsdecisionsinfluenceAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/the-good-meeting-problem/https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/the-good-meeting-problem/Agreement in principle feels like success, which is exactly why it is the hardest of the three failures to notice. A decision that never reaches an operating process was not a decision.Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMToperationsrulesimplementationAdam DeJans Jr.https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/what-would-change-your-mind/https://thedecisionproduct.com/articles/what-would-change-your-mind/What would change the ranking, and what does Tuesday do now. Neither can be answered with a chart, which is precisely why they work.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTdecisionsuncertaintymethodAdam DeJans Jr.