The five stages in one picture

One process, five outputs

Every case in AFM 111 — the group case, the memo, and the two full cases in module 11 — is worked through the same problem-solving process (PSP), in five stages. The stage names are the course's own framework (there is no public syllabus text to quote; the names below are how students and this course describe them). What matters for marking is that each stage produces a distinct output, and the rubric for each stage is a list of those outputs:

1. Assess the situation → role and task; context in two or three facts; stakeholders and what each wants; constraints; the kind of analysis chosen.
2. Identify and analyse the issues → each issue in one sentence with a fact; problem separated from cause and symptom; issues ranked; assumptions written down.
3. Develop and analyse alternatives → at least three genuinely different alternatives; criteria traceable to stakeholder objectives; a weighted matrix with a reason in every cell; a bias check.
4. Decide and recommend → one recommendation, linked to the matrix, with the strongest counter-consideration, the top risk and its mitigation, and next steps with owners and dates.
5. Communicate → the recommendation in the genre the audience needs, in direct order.

Two things about the shape. First, it ends at communicate: the deliverable is the recommendation, and implementation is a next steps section inside stage 4, not a sixth stage. Other frameworks you will meet — the managerial decision steps in a business text end with implement and get feedback; a seven-step version ends with follow up — describe the manager's job. The analyst's job ends when the recommendation is delivered. Second, stage 4 has an arrow back to stage 1: a recommendation is checked against the client's goals as stated in stage 1, which is why stage 1 has to be written down and not merely thought.

Worked example — a club, a venue, five sentences

A student club has rented the same downtown hall for its term-end social for four years; the hall has raised its fee 30 % and the club's treasurer wants a decision by the end of the month. All five stages, one sentence each:

1. Assess: We are the executive advising the treasurer; the members want a good event, the treasurer wants it under budget, the hall wants a signature by the 30th; the constraint is $2,400 and three weeks.
2. Issues: The problem is a $700 gap between the fee and the budget; the cause is the hall's new pricing, not falling attendance (a symptom people assumed); the ranked issues are cost, capacity, date.
3. Alternatives: Renew at the new fee; a campus venue at $1,100 with a smaller capacity; a later date at the hall's off-peak rate — scored against cost, capacity, and members' preference, weighted.
4. Decide: Take the campus venue; it scores highest on cost and capacity; the counter-consideration is atmosphere; the risk is a booking clash, mitigated by reserving this week; next step: the social coordinator books by Friday.
5. Communicate: A short email to the treasurer, recommendation in sentence one, matrix attached.

Label five sentences

Which stage does each belong to?

• "The bank cares about debt capacity; the staff care about their jobs." (Stage 1 — stakeholders and objectives.)
• "Breakdowns are the symptom; the ageing press is the cause." (Stage 2.)
• "Weighting annual cost at 0.30 because the owner named cash first." (Stage 3.)
• "Lease; the risk is lock-in, mitigated by a three-year term." (Stage 4.)
• "Memo to the owner, recommendation in the first sentence." (Stage 5.)

The error the whole process exists to prevent

Proposing a solution while still reading the case. It feels like insight; it is a stage-1 error, because it fixes the answer before the stakeholders, constraints and issues have been laid out, and every later stage then bends toward it. The discipline the five stages impose is simply no recommendation until stage 4 — and the stage-1 rubric this course uses marks a recommendation in stage 1 as a miss, not a bonus.