Decision Table Maker - Generate All Possibilities

Not sure what decision tables are or how to use them? No worries — here's a quick explanation and an example to help you understand what this tool is for and how it works. It's much simpler than it sounds.

What is Decision Table Maker?

Have you ever faced a decision where the answer depends on several "if this, then that" situations? That's exactly where a decision table can help.

You don't need to be a scientist or data expert to use one. In fact, people make decisions like this all the time — like planning dinner, choosing what to wear, or deciding when to water the plants.

A decision table is a simple way to lay out all the possible situations (based on conditions) and decide what to do in each one. This tool helps you list your conditions, automatically shows you every possible combination, and gives you space to write your decision for each one.

The Decision Table Maker doesn't decide for you — it just creates all combinations as table rows and lets you add your decisions as the last column(s).

A Simple Example

Suppose you're deciding what to cook based on two simple factors:

• Do you have bananas at home? (Yes or No)
• Do you feel like cooking? (Yes or No)

Rather than juggling all possible scenarios in your head, you can organize them systematically. The Decision Table Maker starts with two default variables, Variable A and Variable B (you can add more if needed). Rename Variable A and Variable B to some meaningful names, like Bananas Available and Mood to Cook. Set their possible values as Yes and No. The tool instantly generates a table with all combinations, like this:

| Bananas Available | Mood to Cook | Decision     |
| ----------------- | ------------ | ------------ |
| Yes               | Yes          |              |
| Yes               | No           |              |
| No                | Yes          |              |
| No                | No           |              |

Next, rename the Decision column to What to Cook for clarity. Then, fill in your choices for each scenario:

| Bananas Available | Mood to Cook | What to Cook         |
| ----------------- | ------------ | -------------------- |
| Yes               | Yes          | Bake banana bread    |
| Yes               | No           | Ask relative to cook |
| No                | Yes          | Bake sourdough bread |
| No                | No           | Visit a local bakery |

Your decisions may vary, but the process remains the same: map out all scenarios and assign an action to each.

This method works for all kinds of decisions — not just cooking. Speaking of cooking, there's a handy recipe tool called Portion Master. You might want to check it out. Especially if you ever need to scale up your banana bread batch for a crowd 😉

What is a Decision Table

A decision table is a way of visual mapping of possible flows of some decision, when there are a lot of variable conditions involved. The brain of an ordinary human has a quite narrow focus and we often fall short of keeping track of various combinations of things we are trying to form our decision for.

The usage of decision table may help in visualising, not missing and organizing all possible variants of something complex you are trying to get a grasp on.

The decision tables are mostly used by business analysts, developers, and philosophers. But once you know how helpful this method could be, you start to use it in everyday life: from deciding when should you go for a milk, to understanding how to act in complex life situations.

Just write down all available variants in a few lines and put your opinion right next to each one - you have your first decision table. This works terrific when dealing with a few choises, but becomes unberable having a lot of them. This is when automated decision table software becomes really useful.

Automated Decision Table Benefits

This free online decision tabler maker is pretty much the same as your piece of paper and a pen when you have all your variants. But it comes with an irreplaceable feature: it maps all possible combinations for you. This unberable and prone to error task is done seamlessly by a computer.

How to Use This Tool

Overview

1. Set desired number of columns.
2. Fill every option in a column.
3. See all the combinations below.

Make decisions at place

The interface of this broswer decision table tool is rich enough to make decisions right here. Use rows colors, type decisions, change colors and do decide.

Continue in Excel or Google Sheets

Use "Table" button once set the combinations, copy the table and paste it into your table processor. This way you have everything mapped plus the power of table processor - remove, group, and swap rows as you like.

Share and Save

Use a lot of sharing options available at the top panel to share the filled table with your colleagues, friends, or even with yourself in the future.

Tips

• Name a table: just click on a phrase above the table to edit a title.
• You can name a column: just click on its header and type the desired name in.
• You can add options, a lot of them: start typing in a free field below the last option in a column and see it starts to take a place in your combinations.
• Colorize decisions: there is a color palette near the each table row, click the part of it to see the row in color.
• Try templates: XOR, Discount, Golf, and Unit Test buttons at the top populate your table with a sample data.

About

This tool is developed and maintained by the authors of this site, Max "Jakeins" in particular.

Feel free to report any problems and express your ideas for fixes and features, just let us know.