It is the more astute and careful analysts who are most conscious of this and most likely to recognize the value gained by applying these very simple tools. Putting ideas into visible form ensures that they will last. They will lie around for days goading you into having further thoughts. They let us get the obvious and habitual answers out of the way, so that we can add to the list by thinking of other ideas beyond those that came first to mind. With the key elements of a problem written down in some abbreviated form, it is far easier to work with each of the parts while still keeping the problem as a whole in view.
Analysts can generally take account of more factors than when making a global judgment.
They can manipulate individual elements of the problem to examine the many alternatives available through rearranging, combining, or modifying them. Variables may be given more weight or deleted, causal relationships reconceptualized, or conceptual categories redefined. Such thoughts may arise spontaneously, but they are more likely to occur when an analyst looks at each element, one by one, and asks questions designed to encourage and facilitate consideration of alternative interpretations. Problem Structure Anything that has parts also has a structure that relates these parts to each other. One of the first steps in doing analysis is to determine an appropriate structure for the analytical problem, so that one can then identify the various parts and begin assembling information on them.