Jeff,

I think you're retrospective on dialogue mapping is very insightful.  It's funny, I just attended an Expert Choice training seminar as an observer.  And Dr. Foreman, the software inventor made some of the same comments about the AHP.  Facilitators like myself are really excited about the AHP construct because it seems so intuitive.  And students are initially energized but then become deflated after one or two less than satisfactory implementations.

I think there is commonality of the implementation barriers among the different facilitation techniques and it's essentially the human interface that connects a group to the construct.  Sometimes it's because of the limited skill of the facilitator but other times it's the methodology itself.   I've come up with two recommendations for Compendium.  One for users and the other one for developers.

The user recommendation is simple but has been a dramatic improvement in collaboration quality for me.  And that is the use of Speech to Text software to support facilitation.  The most popular speech to text system is Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  It is less than $150 at Amazon.  Once the facilitator is disengaged from the keyboard, the conversational flow is much more natural and fluid because there is not the staccato back and forth of inputting verbal content.  The facilitator only need develop a few smooth transition steps for managing the speech software.

One reason why an IBIS map becomes so dense is because of the numbers of pros and cons that are generated and the fact that there isn't a mechanism now to conflate them.  The AHP also uses a pro and con technique to elicit decision drivers.  But then adds an additional step to convert the pros and cons into objectives.  Generally the pro of one alternative will be a con of another.  Coupled pros and cons can be conflated into a single objective.

For example if in a car purchasing dialogue a Mercedes is an alternative and so is a Toyota, high price will be a con for the Mercedes and low price will be a pro for the Toyota.  In the AHP process, the pro and con are conflated into the single neutral objective "minimize price".  Doing that potentially halves the number of pros and cons in an IBIS map.

So my recommendation to the Compendium developers is one I have made a couple of times before.  Include an "Objective" node type into Compendium.  And some sort of mechanism for easily folding in the coupled pros and cons.

I think this additional step would provide two substantial benefits.  First, they would visually de-clutter many maps enabling a more complete understanding of the decision context.  Secondly, as the facilitator worked the group through the consolidation step, the explicit decision drivers (the objectives) would surface with much more clarity.  That is when the group would have their A-Ha moment about what really matters to them.  And that is when the process itself would be validated.  (As a dispassionate facilitator with catholic sensibilities about techniques, my ideal would be to use Compendium to initially define and bound the decision space.  And then transfer that content to an AHP model for actual prioritization.)

I know that you can create customized nodes in Compendium.  But I am proposing or formal extension to the IBIS process as both the theoretical and practical improvement.  Jeff, rather then cross post this at the Compendium site, I'll let you take it up those guys if you think it makes sense.

Regards,

Steve Mack