Patent ID: 7096188

Claim:
A process for eliciting, processing, storing, and displaying information concerning a complex business situation, the process comprising: employing a knowledge base providing for structured storage and retrieval of data stored in an indexed and normalized form; employing at a) a situation appraisal process to elicit, store, retrieve and present situation data, the situation data including (i) concerns about the situation and respective attributes of the concerns, the attributes of each concern including a relative priority and a process to be used for further analysis, and (ii) actions to be taken to address the concerns; b) a problem analysis process to elicit, store, retrieve and present problem data including an object of a problem in the situation and attributes of the object, the attributes including a deviation, possible causes, actions to be taken to confirm a true cause, a confirmed true cause, and actions to be taken to address the confirmed true cause; c) a decision analysis process to elicit, store, retrieve and present decision data, the decision data including (i) objectives of a decision regarding the situation and respective attributes of the objectives, the attributes of each objective including an indication of relative importance and at least one alternative, (ii) for each alternative a set of risks and respective probabilities and consequences, (iii) a final decision regarding alternatives to be pursued, and (iv) actions to be taken to implement the final decision; and d) a potential side effect analysis process to elicit, store, and present potential side effect data, the side effect data including potential side effects of an action to be taken to address the situation and respective attributes of the potential side effects, the attributes of each potential side effect including a likely cause, actions to be taken to influence the likelihood of occurrence of the side effect, and actions to be taken in the event of occurrence of the side effect; and employing an action tracker process to (i) retrieve and present actions from the other processes, and (ii) to elicit, store, retrieve and present attributes of the actions, the attributes of each action including a responsible person, a deadline, and status; wherein each process employs a corresponding set of graphical user interface (GUI) process screens in eliciting data from and presenting data to a user; wherein each process further includes providing user performance support that includes providing examples to the user regarding the data being elicited upon an indication by the user that such providing of examples is desired; and wherein each analysis process further includes process checking to screen and filter data input by the user to ensure the completeness and correctness thereof.