STRAD: ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

What is STRAD?

STRAD - short for STRategic ADviser - is a unique software package which offers you fast, flexible support whenever you face a tangle of tough decisions.

STRAD helps you make progress with more confidence even when you are surrounded by daunting uncertainties and fast-moving events.

This makes STRAD a practical and highly versatile tool for managers in business and the public sector; for planners and co-ordinators; and for consultants and policy support staff.

You can use STRAD either on your own or as a means of exploring issues and reaching agreements with colleagues, associates or clients.

What does STRAD do?

The STRAD software enables you, and those with whom you work:

• to build a clearer view of the decisions now ahead of you;
• to agree on a strategic focus for closer examination;
• within this, to explore options and consequences in more depth;
• to arrive at a balanced view of important sources of uncertainty;
• to explore resource-effective strategies for responding to important uncertainties, whether technical, political or procedural;
• to build an agreed action plan for making decisions and managing uncertainty through time;
• to extend, review and modify your action plans as circumstances change.

What are its benefits?

STRAD has demonstrated that it can bring several kinds of benefits to users:

• faster progress in tackling tough decisions;
• more confidence in your decision-making;
• savings in time and money through helping you to target investigations more closely;
• fuller mutual understanding with other parties;
• opportunities to build continuously on past progress;
• development of more open and accessible planning processes.

What does STRAD cost?

The fee for a single user licence of the latest release of STRAD, STRAD 2.3, is 300.00 GB Pounds, or 570.00 US Dollars, or 450.00 Euros. It is supplied on compact disk with a set of demonstration project files; with help and tutorial files; and with a comprehensive user's manual in .pdf format which can be printed either in colour or monochrome. These prices will be held until 30 June 2007.

This pricing means that the value for money of STRAD 2.3 compares very favourably with that of other general-purpose planning and decision support tools. Please also note that:

• there is a discount of 20% on all prices for academic users - i.e. 240.00 GB Pounds, 456.00 US dollars or 360.00 Euros;
• for academic institutions, a network licence for multiple users at the same institutional address can be provided at two times the single user fee.

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  What are the uses of STRAD?

  You can use STRAD in any of several ways:

  • as a personal decision support tool;
  • as a means of facilitating progress in small meetings;
  • as an interactive consulting aid;
  • as a means of recording, displaying and guiding progress in a larger meeting;
  • as a form of "organizational memory" for keeping track of the arguments and assumptions underlying important decisions;
  • as a powerful aid to individual and group learning, whether in an in-house training course or in a school of business, planning or public policy.

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  How is STRAD different?

  STRAD is different and complementary in its function to those more familiar and data-hungry planning tools which are designed to help either with the scheduling of continuing operations; or with the day-to-day control of clearly-defined projects; or with the forward allocation of resources within a corporate setting.

  STRAD also differs from other management support software that is based on particular theoretical principles such as those of decision analysis or systems dynamics. For its broad purpose is to help you to adopt a developmental approach to interrelated decisions, while coping with all the uncertainties ahead of you in a resource-effective yet strategic way. With this in view, it integrates methods from different sources to support flexible progress through four linked decision-making modes of shaping, designing, comparing and choosing.

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  What are its emphases?

  There are five main emphases which combine to make STRAD such a uniquely practical planning and management tool:

  • FOCUS: its emphasis is more on supporting decisions than on modelling systems;
  • KNOWLEDGE: its emphasis is more on managing uncertainty than on organizing information;
  • TIME: its emphasis is more on incremental progress than on comprehensive plans;
  • LEARNING: its emphasis is more on enriching communication than on reinforcing expertise.
  • INFLUENCE: its emphasis is more on facilitating negotiations than on exercising control.

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  How did STRAD originate?

  The roots of STRAD are to be found in a distinctive approach to planning under uncertainty known as the Strategic Choice Approach. This first emerged in the course of two action research projects conducted by staff of the Tavistock Institute in the UK - one concerned with policy-making in city government, and the other with the management of major construction projects.

  Development of the STRAD software began in 1988, after many years of experience in the development of visual tools for communication among decision makers through low-technology media - usually, flip charts and felt-tipped marker pens - in an informal workshop setting. A first DOS version of STRAD was launched in 1991, followed by the more user-friendly STRAD 2 for Windows in 1994. This has been progressively refined, and additional features introduced, as more powerful versions of Microsoft Windows have superseded earlier releases.

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  What are its applications?

  STRAD has already demonstrated that it has an exceptionally wide range of applications, in terms of both subject matter and level of organizational - or inter-organizational - decision-making.

  Among recent areas of application are:

  • organizational change
  • small business strategy
  • planning community services
  • new product marketing
  • urban regeneration
  • educational management
  • relocation decisions
  • design of major projects
  • information systems strategy
  • regional development
  • environmental policy
  • inter-agency collaboration
  • integrated transport planning
  • production systems redesign

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  Who uses STRAD?

  There are now users of STRAD in 34 countries, as listed under our worldwide links. The main categories of user are:

  • managers, planners and project co-ordinators in business organizations in the manufacturing, financial and distribution sectors;
  • managers and policy support staff in public sector organizations and inter-organisational partnerships concerned with community development initiatives and with the planning and coordination of different responsibilities within such fields as urban development, transport, education and health;
  • management and planning consultants;
  • staff, students and researchers in schools of management, planning, public policy and international development.

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  Is STRAD easy to use?

  STRAD has been designed to make full use of the graphical user interface of Microsoft Windows. So you will find STRAD easy to use if you are already familiar with other Windows software.

  STRAD encourages you to work on your problems in a structured yet intuitive way. Like any of the integrated office software packages, STRAD offers you a balanced and mutually consistent set of tools, the more basic of which can be grasped quickly - leaving you to develop your appreciation of the more powerful advanced features in your own time.

  Among the learning aids supplied with STRAD are a tutorial for use in exploring the demonstration files provided, and an on-line help system for instant support while using STRAD on your own projects.

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  What support is available?

  As a registered user of STRAD, you will be eligible to receive the following supporting services:

  • free technical advice by e-mail or telephone over a twelve month period;
  • occasional bulletins informing you of new developments, applications, services, demo tours and training events;
  • free copies of any upgrades issued within your first 12 months;
  • after your first 12 months, the opportunity to order major upgrades of STRAD at a very substantial discount.
  Please contact Stradspan to ask for leaflets about on-site training programmes, and about supporting services for academic users, including provision of case materials.

  For a closer look at the main window layouts of STRAD, with explanations of their functions, see program design