The Stakeholder Agreement Metric: Quantifying Preference Agreement Between Product Stakeholders

Go/no-go decisions require engineering design teams to evaluate whether a concept is worth further investment of resources. These decisions can be difficult when product success depends on multiple stakeholders in addition to the end-user. This study proposes the Stakeholder Agreement Metric (SAM) framework to estimate the level of agreement between stakeholder preferences via the distance between optimal designs calculated from a preference model derived from conjoint analysis. The framework was tested in an empirical case study describing the design and piloting of a hand tool for informal electronic waste workers in Thailand. Data from a follow-up assessment indicate the SAM estimate aligned with future metrics of stakeholder satisfaction. The case study also qualitatively compared SAM to the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Data collection issues with AHP illustrated some of the practical limitations of the framework. This study suggests that the SAM framework is a promising tool to further explore as a way to support designers making go/no-go decisions that involve multiple stakeholders. Further exploration should include additional case studies to investigate potential outcomes of different SAM values and comparing multiple stakeholder groups.