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02 (031-048B) chapter 2 1/29/02 4:49 PM Page 45

Designing the Analysis 45

Responsibility is mostly self-evident. After all, someone has to
take charge of each analysis, or it won’t get done. We’ll cover the
question of how you assign the right people to the right tasks (and
get them on your team in the first place) in Chapter 6, “Manag-
ing Your Team.” Usually, it makes sense to parcel out responsibil-
ity for discrete chunks of the analysis (e.g., for each subissue) to
one person, but it’s not a requirement. Thus, in our example, Tom
is in charge of answering the question “Does the new process
require special facilities?” Belinda is on the hook for finding out
whether we can acquire any special facilities that we might need,
but one piece of that analysis goes to Terry. Why? As it happens,
Terry is our financial expert and is building an overall financial
model for the project, so it makes sense for Terry to analyze the
rate of return.
Due date, once again, is self-explanatory. Being specific about
dates helps the members of your team understand what is expected
of them and allows you to visualize the overall flow of the project
from start to finish. Some people like to track their due dates in
more detail with Gantt charts or other project management tools.
That’s up to you.
In our example, one analysis more or less dovetails neatly with
the next. Bear in mind, however, that sometimes the results of one
analysis will make a whole range of subsequent analyses redun-
dant, thus saving you the trouble of actually performing them. For
instance, if the analyses prove our initial hypothesis that we don’t
need special facilities, then the question of whether we can acquire
them—and all the attendant analyses—falls away. Thus, if you can,
you should schedule your analyses to let you answer these “domi-
nant” questions first. Of course, sometimes you don’t have the lux-
ury to wait for the results of one analysis before you start the next.
Still, make the most of opportunities to prune your analysis plan
aggressively.