Preparing A Case Study:

Preparing A Case Study:

It helps to have a system when sitting down to prepare a case study as the amount of information and issues to be resolved can initially seem quite overwhelming. The following is a good way to start.

Step 1: The Short Cycle Process

You should now be familiar with what the case study is about, and are ready to begin the process of analyzing it. You are not done yet! Many students mistakenly believe that this is all the preparation needed for a class discussion of a case study. If this was the extent of your preparation, your ability to contribute to the discussion would likely be limited to the first one quarter of the class time allotted. You need to go further to prepare the case, using the next step. One of the primary reasons for doing the short cycle process is to give you an indication of how much work will need to be done to prepare the case study properly.

Step 2: The Long Cycle Process

At this point, the task consists of two parts:

When you are doing the detailed reading of the case study, look for the following sections:

Most, but not all case studies will follow this format. The purpose here is to thoroughly understand the situation and the decisions that will need to be made. Take your time, make notes, and keep focussed on your objectives.

Analyzing the case should take the following steps:

Defining the issue(s)/Problem Statement

The problem statement should be a clear, concise statement of exactly what needs to be addressed. This is not easy to write! The work that you did in the short cycle process answered the basic questions. Now it is time to decide what the main issues to be addressed are going to be in much more detail. Asking yourself the following questions may help:

The problem statement may be framed as a question, eg: What should Joe do or How can Mr Smith improve market share Usually the problem statement has to be re-written several times during the analysis of a case, as you peel back the layers of symptoms or causation.

Analyzing Case Data

In analyzing the case data, you are trying to answer the following:

Now, where are the problems being caused within this framework, and why

Generating Alternatives

This section deals with different ways in which the problem can be resolved. Typically, there are many (the joke is at least three), and being creative at this stage helps. Things to remember at this stage are:

Once the alternatives have been identified, a method of evaluating them and selecting the most appropriate one needs to be used to arrive at a decision.

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Key Decision Criteria

A very important concept to understand, they answer the question of how you are going to decide which alternative is the best one to choose. Other than choosing randomly, we will always employ some criteria in making any decision. Think about the last time that you make a purchase decision for an article of clothing. Why did you choose the article that you did The criteria that you may have used could have been:

Note that any one of these criteria could appropriately finish the sentence, the brand/style that I choose to purchase must…. These criteria are also how you will define or determine that a successful purchase decision has been made. For a business situation, the key decision criteria are those things that are important to the organization making the decision, and they will be used to evaluate the suitability of each alternative recommended.

Key decision criteria should be:

Students tend to find the concept of key decision criteria very confusing, so you will probably find that you re-write them several times as you analyze the case. They are similar to constraints or limitations, but are used to evaluate alternatives.

Evaluation of Alternatives

If you have done the above properly, this should be straightforward. You measure the alternatives against each key decision criteria. Often you can set up a simple table with key decision criteria as columns and alternatives as rows, and write this section based on the table. Each alternative must be compared to each criteria and its suitability ranked in some way, such as met/not met, or in relation to the other alternatives, such as better than, or highest. This will be important to selecting an alternative. Another method that can be used is to list the advantages and disadvantages (pros/cons) of each alternative, and then discussing the short and long term implications of choosing each. Note that this implies that you have already predicted the most likely outcome of each of the alternatives. Some students find it helpful to consider three different levels of outcome, such as best, worst, and most likely, as another way of evaluating alternatives.

Recommendation

You must have one! Business people are decision-makers; this is your opportunity to practice making decisions. Give a justification for your decision (use the KDC’s). Check to make sure that it is one (and only one) of your Alternatives and that it does resolve what you defined as the Problem.

Structure of the Written Report

Different Instructors will require different formats for case reports, but they should all have roughly the same general content. For this course, the report should have the following sections in this order:

Notes on Written Reports:

Always remember that you will be judged by the quality of your work, which includes your written work such as case study reports. Sloppy, dis-organized, poor quality work will say more about you than you probably want said! To ensure the quality of your written work, keep the following in mind when writing your report: