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Sigma Magic Help Version 17

Benefit Effort Plot

Overview

Benefit Effort Plot can be used to visually represent the placement of different initiatives on a benefit-effort scale. The benefits of the efforts are shown on the X-axis, and the other variable is on the Y-axis. By looking at the placement of the initiatives, you can select the best initiatives to implement. For example, you may first want to choose initiatives with a high benefit and low effort. You may wish to avoid initiatives with low benefits and high effort. For the remaining two quadrants (high benefit & high effort) and (low benefit & low effort), you will have to make a business decision on how you would like to address these initiatives. This would depend on the number of improvements you seek and the time and cost estimates for these initiatives.

This tool can be added to your active workbook by clicking on Project and then selecting Benefit Effort Plot.

Inputs

Click on Analysis Setup to open the menu options for this tool.

Setup

A sample screenshot of the setup menu is shown below.
Benefit Effort Dialog Box
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Rating Scale: You can specify your benefits and efforts on a 0-5 scale, 0-10 scale, or 0-100 scale. Pick the scale best for your needs and enter the worksheet numbers within this range. For example, if you pick the 0-10 scale, then a low benefit will be in the range of 0-2, and very high benefits will be in the range of 9-10. Similarly, rate the effort and risk as appropriate.
2
Num Tasks: Specify the number of tasks you want to create the Benefit-Effort plot. This information is used to reformat your worksheet and create a table for data entry. Note that any data below this table will be cleared.
3
X Variable: Specify if you would like to view the benefits or the efforts on the X-axis. This selection does not alter your analysis results - this is just for visualization only.
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Num Groups: Specify the number of groups to display the bubble chart. If you pick 1 group, all effort and benefits are treated on par. Any project with benefits greater than effort will be assigned a priority of 1, and the other projects are assigned a priority of 2. If you specify two groups, the graph is divided into two regions: Low and High for Benefits and Low and High for Effort. All projects with greater benefits than the effort are rated a priority of 1. If the benefits and efforts are similar, it is assigned a priority 2. Else, it will be priority 3. If you specify three groups, the chart will be broken up into Low, Medium, and High, and the priority rating will range from 1-5. Priority 1 for projects where benefits are significantly higher than effort, priority 2 for benefits higher than effort, priority 3 for benefits equal to effort, priority four where benefits are worse than effort, and priority 5 for benefits significantly worse than effort.
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View Example: Click on this button to open the example file. You can view the example to get an idea of how to fill out this tool, or you can use the example as a starting point and modify it to meet your project needs.
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Help Button: Click on this button to view the help file for this topic.
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Cancel Button: Click on this button to cancel any changes and exit this dialog box.
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Create Design: If this is your first time using this template, click this button to format the worksheet template. You can also update the worksheet format any time, but remember that you may lose any data entered on this worksheet. Once you are happy with the worksheet template layout, you must enter any required data on the worksheet. When the data entered into the worksheet is complete, you can click on Analysis Setup and then Compute Outputs to generate analysis results.
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Analyze Design: Click on this button to save all changes and compute the outputs for this analysis. Review the results of your analysis and make changes to your inputs if required to update analysis results.

Charts

You will see the following dialog box if you click the Charts button. Charts
1
Title: The system will automatically pick a title for your chart. However, if you want to override that with your title, you can specify a title for your chart here. Note that this input is optional.
2
Sub Title: The system will automatically pick a subtitle for your chart. However, if you want to override that with your subtitle, specify a subtitle for your chart here. Note that this input is optional.
3
X Label: The system will automatically pick a label for the x-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your label for the x-axis, you can specify a different label here. Note that this input is optional.
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Y Label: The system will automatically pick a label for the y-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your label for the y-axis, you can specify a different label here. Note that this input is optional.
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X Axis: The system will automatically pick a scale for the x-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your values for the x-axis, you can specify them here. The format for this input is to determine the minimum, increment, and maximum values separated by a semi-colon. For example, if you specify 10;20, the minimum x-axis scale is set at 10, and the maximum x-axis scale is set at 20. If you specify 10;2;20, then, in addition to minimum and maximum values, the x-axis increment is set at 2. Note that this input is currently disabled, and you cannot change this setting.
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Y Axis: The system will automatically pick a scale for the y-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your values for the y-axis, you can specify them here. The format for this input is to determine the minimum, increment, and maximum values separated by a semi-colon. For example, if you specify 10;20, the minimum y-axis scale is set at 10, and the maximum y-axis is set at 20. If you specify 10;2;20, then, in addition to minimum and maximum values, the y-axis increment is set at 2. Note that this input is currently disabled, and you cannot change this setting.
7
Horizontal Lines: You can specify the values here if you want to add a few extra horizontal reference lines on top of your chart. The format for this input is numeric values separated by semi-colons. For example, if you specify 12;15, two horizontal lines are plotted at Y = 12 and Y = 15, respectively. Note that this input is currently disabled, and you cannot change this setting.
8
Vertical Lines: You can specify the values here to add a few extra vertical reference lines to your chart. The format for this input is numeric values separated by semi-colon. For example, if you specify 2;5, two vertical lines are plotted at X = 2 and X = 5, respectively. Note that this input is currently disabled, and you cannot change this setting.

Worksheet

Enter the following information in the worksheet:
  • Enter the initiative number. You can usually use numeric values 1, 2, 3, etc., or you can name each initiative using an alpha-numeric string like "IN01," etc. These values are shown on the graph.
  • Enter a brief description of the initiative. This is a one-line description of the initiative to describe the idea to other stakeholders.
  • Enter a number for the estimated benefits of this initiative on the appropriate scale. A benefit close to 0 would be low, while a benefit close to the maximum value would be very high. You must ensure that all initiatives have relatively the same scale when you rank the initiatives.
  • Enter a number for the estimated efforts of each initiative on the appropriate scale. An effort close to 0 would be low Or easy to implement, while an effort close to the maximum value would be difficult to implement. Make sure that all the initiatives are ranked on a similar scale.
  • If you have specified the risk column, enter the risk information for each initiative. A risk value close to 0 would be low risk, while a risk value close to the maximum would be high risk.

Verify

If you click the Verify button, the software will perform some checks on the data you entered. A sample screenshot of the dialog box is shown in the figure below. Verify The software checks if you have correctly specified the input options and entered the required data on the worksheet. The results of the analysis checks are listed on the right. If the checks are passed, they are shown as green-colored checkmarks. If the verification checks fail, they are shown as a red-colored cross. The verification checks are shown in the orange exclamation mark if the verification checks result in a warning. Finally, any checks required to be performed by the user are shown as blue info icons.
1
Item: The left-hand side shows the major tabs and the items checked within each section
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Status: The right-hand side shows the status of the checks.
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Overall Status: The overall status of all the checks for the given analysis is shown here. The overall status check shows a green thumps-up sign if everything is okay and a red thumps-down sign if any checks have not passed. Note that you cannot proceed with generating analysis results for some analyses if the overall status is not okay.

Outputs

Click on Compute Outputs to update the output calculations. A sample screenshot of the worksheet is shown below.
Benefit Effort Example The following message is displayed after the successful completion of the analysis. Benefit Effort 2 You can visually view each of the initiatives on the chart. If all the initiatives are clustered in one quadrant, then the scaling you have used for the benefit and effort may be too broad. You will need to use a narrower scale and re-do the values for benefits & efforts. Once you have a chart with a reasonably good spread of the initiatives across multiple quadrants, you can use this chart to decide which initiatives you would like to select for implementation. First, choose those initiatives that have a high benefit and low effort. Next, pick initiatives with high benefits and effort if you are willing to spend the effort to realize these high benefits. Third, you would like to choose the low-effort and low-benefit initiatives if you would like to capture even minimal improvements. Finally, you may want to ignore initiatives with low benefits and high efforts. You can use this chart to explain the logic for the selected initiatives you have chosen to select for your project.

Notes

Here are a few pointers regarding this analysis:
  • If you don't like the distribution of the benefit effort plot due to the overlap of the entities, you may want to alter the benefit effort values a bit so that the overlap is minimized. You can also consider changing the risk values to a different scale so that the bubble sizes can be controlled.

Examples

The following examples are in the Examples folder.
  • Select a project you are currently working on and develop a Benefit Effort Plot for the same (Benefit Effort 2.xlsx).