Delphi Method by Amr Ali

Delphi Method

Presented to Dr. Mahmoud Abd Ellatif

Team Members

Amr Abd-Elmohsen Ali

Ahmed Mohammed Ezzat

Mohammed Saleh Abdo

Khaled Ahmed Mohammed

Agenda

• Introduction• Delphi Method History• Basic Delphi Method Process• Properties of Delphi Method• Delphi Method Advantages for Use in CI• Delphi Method Disadvantages for Use in CI• Delphi Method and F2F Meetings Comparison• Implementation of the Delphi Method Example• Conclusion

Introduction

Delphi Method • The Delphi method is a structured communication technique, originally

developed as an interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.

• Delphi Method is highly used in Collective Intelligence.

Collective Intelligence • shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration,

collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making.

Delphi Method History

• The name "Delphi" derives from the Oracle of Delphi• The Delphi method was developed at the beginning of the Cold War to forecast

the impact of technology on warfare. • In 1944, General Henry H. Arnold ordered the creation of the report for the U.S.

Army Air Corps on the future technological capabilities that might be used by the military.

• Different approaches were tried, but the shortcomings of traditional forecasting methods, such as theoretical approach, quantitative models or trend extrapolation, in areas where precise scientific laws have not been established yet, quickly became apparent.

• To cross these shortcomings, the Delphi method was developed by Project RAND during the 1950-1960s (1959) by Olaf Helmet, Norman Dalkey, and Nicholas Rescher.

Basic Delphi Method Process

• An initial questionnaire focusing on the identified problem is developed by expert panels.

• An appropriate expert group is selected and questionnaire is sent to them.• Each participant answers the questionnaire independently • The questionnaire responses are summarized • Feedback summary and a second questionnaire for the same respondent group is

developed • After reviewing the feedback summary, respondents independently rate priority

ideas included in the second questionnaire • The process is repeated until process committee feels positions are firm and

agreement on a topic is reached • A final summary report is made and distributed

Delphi Method Work Flow

Properties of Delphi Method

Structuring of Information Flow

• The initial answers or contributions from the experts are collected in the form of answers to questionnaires and their comments to these answers.

• The panel director controls the interactions among the participants by processing the information and filtering out irrelevant content.

• This avoids the negative effects of face-to-face panel discussions and solves the usual problems of group dynamics.


Regular Feedback

• Participants comment on their own forecasts, the responses of others and on the progress of the panel as a whole.

• At any moment they can revise their earlier statements.

• While in regular group meetings participants tend to stick to previously stated opinions and often conform too much to group leader, the Delphi method prevents it.


Anonymity of the participants

• Usually all participants maintain Anonymous Identity. • Their identity is not revealed even after the completion of the final report.

• This stops them from dominating others in the process using their authority or personality,

• Frees them to some extent from their personal biases,

• Allows them to freely express their opinions, encourages open critique and admitting errors by revising earlier judgments.

Facilitator Role

• The person or group who is coordinating the Delphi method can be known as a facilitator or management team and facilitates the responses of their panel of experts.

• The facilitator sends out questionnaires, surveys etc.

• Collects and analyzes responses , then identifies common and conflicting viewpoints.

• If target is not reached, the process continues through rounds to gradually work towards target achieving.

Delphi Method

When is it appropriate?

•In situations where there is no clear-cut resolution of a given problem.

•When time and cost constraints make frequent face-to-face meetings difficult to arrange.

•When the heterogeneity of the participants must be preserved and anonymity assured.

Delphi Method

When is it appropriate?Factual questions should not be candidates for Delphi.

X "Given continued trends in immigration, birth, and death rates, the population of Egypt in year 2017 will be?

The question of whether or not current population trends will continue is a matter of judgment and, therefore, here Delphi is appropriate.

Delphi Practical Steps

• Step 1: Assign a process committee and/or a management team• Step 2: Set up expert panels to prepare and formulate statement • Step 3: Plan the whole process practical details

– How do expert panels meet– What format and by what means is the questionnaires delivered– How do you plan to analyze the answers– How do you plan to present the feedback of the previous round– will there be presentations and follow-up workshops between rounds

• Step 4: Decide fields of Delphi• Step 5: Choose Question’s Design

– MCQ’s , Time Estimate Questions – Questions with specific answer– Open ended section

• Step 6: Follow steps in Basic Delphi Method

Avoid..

• A common mistake is to include two events in the same question

Example: "When will bicycles be made mostly of plastics and used in urban transportation?"

Differences in the way people answer this question may stem not only from their perceptions about future uses of plastic in bicycles, but also from differences in their beliefs about when bicycles will likely be used for urban transportation

Selecting Experts for Delphi Process

• Science & Technology experts• Investors and venture capitalists• Technology transfer offices (TTOs), at universities and government

research laboratories.• Large companies and industry groups. • Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)• Funding organizations.

• Finally, The larger the breadth of the experts used for scanning and evaluating, the better and more accurate the forecasts.

Selecting Experts for Delphi Process

• Some researchers attempted to introduce a refinement: self- rated expertise .

• Example of self-rating:1. Are you an expert in this field, working in it daily?2. Do you work in this field occasionally?3. Are you knowledgeable about this field through occasional professional reading?4. Would you classify yourself as an informed layman?5. Are you uninformed about this field?

• Some will be humble, others …

Lock-and-Key Approach

In this approach, administrators attempt to match the capabilities of participants with the requirements of the questions

Lock-and-Key Approach

This process could be automated. The program would have access to a data base of the respondent's characteristics.

The program would call for question attributes and weights, automatically scan the data base, score each respondent and present a different rank ordered list of respondents for each question

Result Analysis Options

• Rankings

• Qualitative Clustering

• Different graphical illustrations

• Scenarios, timelines and roadmaps (what happens when)

• Software based calculations and matrices graphs

Result Analysis Options

Delphi Advantages for Use in CI

• Long term problems can be assessed.• Reduces tacit and complex knowledge into a single statement• Provides reliable judgment or forecast results.• Enables better judgment in decision making in the present• Allows sharing of information and reasoning among participants• Conducive to independent thinking and gradual formulation• Can be used to reach target among hostile groups to each other without

their knowledge.• Can be an inexpensive way to create a census from large number of

participants.

Delphi Disadvantages for Use in CI

• Judgments are those of a selected group of people and may not be representative

• Expert biasing, as top experts consider their own research specialty relatively higher in importance to others.

• Tendency to eliminate extreme positions and force a middle-of-the-road consensus

• More time-consuming than the group process method• Requires skill in written communication• Requires adequate time and participant commitment and ownership.

RT-Delphi

• The new approach, in Delphis is the RT-Delphi • Basically, it is a round-less Delphi conducted online on the internet

• In RT-Delphis, each time, an expert visits the website, he/she views his/her own earlier responses, and can modify the responses, based on the new averages, medians, distributions, and reasons given by other experts for their positions

• The information on the website is automatically updated whenever any new input is entered from any participant

Real Time-Delphi Advantages

• Significantly saves time and cost; as it eliminates the huge manual effort needed to send questionnaires, collect responses, and assemble data, in each round of the study.

• Experts can reassess their positions as frequent as they want.

• Experts can be selected from any place in the world, and can have instantaneous access to the website.

• Flexibility in the number of participants (no matter how many).

• It can be easily applied to problems formulated in a matrix design

Delphi Method VS. F2F Meetings

Success Factors of Delphi Method

• Talent of the Facilitator.

• Unbiased judgments of the Facilitator.

• Getting the right experts for the questionnaires.

• Experts taking responsibility of the problems in hand.

Implementation of the Delphi Method - A Fictional Example

Background - I• Custombikes is an Ottawa based company. Its main business operation is

enabling customers design their own bicycles with the help of professional and manufacturing the designed bicycle within their own factory.

• The company specializes in creating custom bicycles and offers the best customer service for the parts and other accessories.

• Custombikes is one of the biggest custom bicycle manufacturers in the world. They continuously review the efficiency of manufacturing processes and business practices to be sure that their actions, and those of their employees, reflect their goals.


Background - II• The objective of the company is to increase revenue by reaching more

customers with the joy of creating a bicycle on one`s own, and ordering the bike online.

• In order to do this, they need to have enough information and feedback

regarding whether this initiative would be a good fit with their goals and be an efficient and effective use of their financing, marketing, human resources and manufacturing capacity.

• Since this is a big investment, the company needs to know the likely outcome of this initiative in 10 year time frame.


Objective of the CI Need

• To understand whether it is feasible to implement an e-commerce initiative for Custombikes.


Is Delphi the Right Choice?• Custombikes is looking for a long term foresight

• The foresight needs to be determined via sharing of information and reasoning among participants

• Inexpensive to implement (online surveys only, no workshops or panel discussions)

• The main reason the company should choose to use Delphi method is the that it would bring together technical, organizational, and personal perspectives. The method is easily understood and thus accommodates different understandings of forecasting and foresight.


Phases for Implementing the Method - Phase 1 - Brainstorming Questionnaire 1

•Step 1: List four important factors that you think will affect the sales revenue of Custombikes via e-commerce in Canada.

•Step 2: What are the other e-commerce initiatives/practices you are aware of from competitors?

•Step 3: What could be the limitations for this initiative?



•The questions form the first questionnaire that will be answered by the experts in the company.

•Once the results are received, they are analyzed looking for commonalities in answers, outstanding responses, and/or other possibilities/opportunities the experts have mentioned in their responses.

•The responses will be examined in detail, in order to receive a good understanding and give a relevant feedback.

•The creative stage of the Delphi study occurs when soliciting factors from participants, while the ranking and weighting stages involve mainly judgmental opinion.



•This questionnaire is done to validate the consolidated list of factors and it will list all the consolidated factors obtained from the first questionnaire and will be grouped into categories.

•Based on the information provided by the experts in the previous questionnaire, a one-sentence explanation for each factor and an explanatory glossary will be included for defining and explaining each factor.

•Then, the exact copy of the responses will be delivered to the experts.



This time they will be asked to conduct the 2nd questionnaire as below: •Step 1: Verify the interpretation on the responses has been correctly made and placed into right category.

•Step 2: Verify and categorize the important factors listed on how the sales revenues will be affected if e-commerce initiative is used.

•At this stage, the experts will be able to refine and adjust their opinions, suggest new ideas that they have not thought initially, and be able to make more sound categorizations.

•Based on the two lists provided from the two questionnaires, lists and categorizations will be further refined.


Phases for Implementing the Method - Phase 2 - Narrowing down Questionnaire 3

This questionnaire is for choosing the most important factors. It will be arranged to eliminate bias in the listed factors.

Thus, the questionnaire will be conducted as below: •Step 1: Experts will be asked to select at least 10 factors they consider important to e-commerce for Custombikes.

•Step 2: After all the responses are returned, each expert will be analyzed separately to identify the factors selected by over 50% of the experts.

•This process enables us to reduce the list to a manageable size with no more than 20 factors.


Phases for Implementing the Method - Phase 3 - Ranking Questionnaire 4

•This questionnaire is executed for ranking the chosen factors.

•Each expert will submit a rank of categorized factors.

•Each ranked list will reflect the priority order: one ordering for each list infrastructure and expediency for example.

•The questionnaire also will ask experts to submit comments explaining or justifying their rankings.

•At the end of this phase, the priorities affecting e-commerce for Custombikes that each of the experts placed on various factors will be represented.


Phases for Implementing the Method - Phase 3 - Ranking Questionnaire 4 . •This process assures that the factors in the list are the most important, and that the rankings are a valid indicator of the relative importance of the various factors.

•Based on these results, propositions will be offered by reassessing the theoretical observations for e-commerce in Custombikes.

•After all the phases are executed, a SWOT analysis will be conducted using the information gathered from the Delphi method, in order to provide usable data and analysis for management to base their decisions and planning.


Statement

• Custombikes will have a bigger market share in the world in ten years with the additional online sales channel.

Thank You