How do you make trade-offs when comparing such widely disparate things? In the past, decision makers have relied mostly on instinct, common sense, and guesswork. They’ve lacked a clear, rational, and easy-to-use trade-off methodology. To help fill that gap, we have developed a system — which we call even swaps — that provides a practical way of making trade-offs among any set of objectives across a range of alternatives. In essence, the even-swap method is a form of bartering — it forces you to think about the value of one objective in terms of another.
Before you can begin making trade-offs, you need to have a clear picture of all your alternatives and their consequences for each of your objectives. A good way to create that picture is to draw up a consequences table.