Generating Alternatives and Viability Analysis

Generating Alternatives

As a result of the brainstorming, the team comes up with five possible strategies:

1. better marketing of health center services to the community so that users know about the services provided by the health center;
2. restructuring of the health center's facilities to make people feel more comfortable in the health center;
3. improving staff performance through training and through reorganization of the health center;
4. improving quality of services;
5. coordination with other providers to improve coverage.

Viability Analysis

Mrs. Alvarez explains that a prioritization matrix is a useful technique for achieving consensus about an issue. The matrix helps the team rank problems or issues (usually generated through brainstorming) by a particular criterion that is important to them.

The team decides to base the analysis on three criteria: effectiveness, cost, and technical feasibility. The team will examine each of the alternatives using these three criteria.

• Effectiveness: fulfillment of the mission
• Cost: assessment of the investment and recurrent costs of the alternatives
• Technical feasibility: ease of implementation

Mrs. Alvarez asks the team to vote on the most effective, least expensive, a nd most technically feasible line of action. Each participant votes three times for each of the criteria, and each vote has the same weight (1 point). After the voting is completed, Mrs. Alvarez adds together the votes received for each suggested line of action and tallies the votes in the right-hand column, under Total.

Line of Action	Effectiveness	Cost	Technical Feasibility	Total
Marketing	2	3	3	8
Restructure of the physical facilities	2	1	2	5
Improving staff performance	3	2	1	6
Improving service quality	3	1	2	6
Coordination with other providers	1	3	1	5