Strengths
- Well structured process / procedure: Breaking down the decision-making process into a series of steps helps to conduct a clearly structured process with the stakeholders. Application at the study sites has shown that the steps are mostly clear and manageable.
- Build understanding / awareness of other stakeholders' views: Different stakeholder groups having equal votes in scoring, and the possibility to negotiate the scoring in order to reach consensus, require that various points of view and opinions are being discussed. This forces all participants to listen to the arguments of other stakeholders, encourages a change in perspectives and mind sets, and therefore enhances respecting and understanding different stakeholders' perceptions.
- Easy calculation and visualization of results: Using the Facilitator software helps to make calculations of the weighted criteria combined with the scores, which would be difficult to do manually. The result presented in bars allows a visual comparison of the assessed options.
- Seeking commitment as part of the process: during the last step of the methodology some kind of commitment is sought from the stakeholders regarding the thereafter implementation phase. Of course, nobody should be urged to commit him- or herself to something he or she doesn't want. However, stakeholders willing to commit themselves in one way or another are a perfect basis for creating a sense of ownership and interest in the further steps of the project. We have the strong feeling that this commitment would hardly be possible if exchange of ideas and experience, as well as interaction and collaboration among different stakeholder groups had not started already in the first stakeholder workshop, and continued during the second.
