Senior decisions are comparative. Nobody at executive level asks whether a proposal is good; they ask whether it is the best available use of a fixed amount of money, attention and workforce. This stage of NR-720 typically asks you to put two or three real options side by side, evaluate them against stated criteria, and recommend one while saying honestly what is lost by not choosing the others. Opportunity cost is the concept the whole stage runs on. Your section may print this as NR 720 or NR720; it is the same course. Chamberlain publishes no syllabi outside Canvas. The placement here is our teaching judgment from the course's catalog arc; your section's rubric decides what your week actually asks.
What NR-720 Week 6 asks for
A system with a medical-surgical length of stay problem had three credible things it could do with the same pool of money and executive attention. It could extend case management coverage into evenings and weekends, which addressed a well-documented discharge bottleneck. It could contract additional post-acute capacity, which addressed the Friday and holiday backlog that no amount of internal effort touched. Or it could build the discharge lounge and staff it, which released beds earlier in the day and helped throughput more than length of stay. All three were defensible. Only one could go first, because all three depended on the same operations leader and the same fiscal year, and the proposal that eventually succeeded was the one that said so on its first page instead of pretending the others did not exist.
That is what this stage tests. The written work is often an options analysis, an alternatives comparison, or a proposal that must consider alternatives before recommending. It sits late enough in the session that you have an environment read, a systems analysis, a cost build and a workforce position to bring to it, and the deliverable usually expects those threads to arrive together.
The technical requirement is that options be genuinely comparable. Two strong candidates and one obviously absurd alternative is a common pattern in weak papers and it is transparent to any reader who has sat on a committee. So is comparing options against criteria invented after the preferred answer was chosen. State the criteria first, weight them if the decision warrants it, and let the comparison run.
The doctoral requirement is that the criteria be defensible and evidence-linked. Effect on the outcome, time to effect, cost, feasibility given workforce and market conditions, risk, reversibility and equity implications are all legitimate. Say why these criteria for this decision, and cite the evidence behind any claim about how an option performs on one of them.
The NR-720 Week 6 method, step by step
Six moves for an options comparison that survives a committee.
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Generate options that address the constraint you identified
Each candidate should plausibly move the thing your systems analysis named as the bottleneck. Options that improve something else are not alternatives; they are different projects, and including them makes the comparison meaningless.
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Set and justify the criteria before you evaluate anything
Four to six criteria, each with a sentence on why it matters for this decision. Criteria chosen after the fact are visible in the writing, because they line up suspiciously well with one option's strengths.
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Score each option on evidence, not impression
Where a criterion is measurable, use the measure and cite the source. Where it is a judgment, say it is a judgment and give the reasoning. A comparison table with unexplained ratings is decoration.
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Include doing nothing as a real option
The status quo has a cost and it is the option that wins by default when nobody writes it down. Cost it in the same units as the others, because in some years it is genuinely the right answer.
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State the opportunity cost of the recommendation
What the organization gives up by choosing this one: the other options deferred, the attention consumed, the capacity committed. This is the paragraph that most distinguishes executive writing from proposal writing.
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Name the conditions that would change the answer
If the post-acute market tightens, if a vacancy is filled, if a payment arrangement changes, the ranking may invert. Saying so shows the reader how robust your recommendation is and tells them what to watch.
A layout and word budget for an options analysis
Our frame for this stage, sized for roughly 1,300 to 1,600 words with the scoring carried in a comparison table. This outline is ours rather than anything the university issues, and your week's rubric outranks it wherever the two disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| The decision restated | What is being chosen between, at what scale, with the constraint the options must address. | 100 to 140 |
| Criteria and justification | Four to six criteria, each with why it matters here, and any weighting with its reasoning. | 200 to 250 |
| The options described | Each candidate in operational terms: what it involves, who does it, over what period. | 280 to 340 |
| Comparison against criteria | How each option performs, with sources for measurable criteria and reasoning for judgments. | 300 to 360 |
| Recommendation and opportunity cost | The choice, and what the organization forgoes by making it, stated plainly. | 200 to 250 |
| Conditions that would change it | The two or three developments that would reorder the options, and what to monitor. | 140 to 180 |
Evidence craft for options analysis
Support each option's expected effect with its own evidence. Different alternatives usually rest on different literatures, and a comparison in which only the preferred option is cited tells the reader how the analysis was really conducted.
Report effects in the same units across options. If one option is described in bed days and another in patient experience scores, the comparison cannot be made. Convert to a common measure where possible and state the conversion, or compare within criteria rather than across them.
Cite decision methods if you use one. Weighted scoring, decision matrices and multi-criteria approaches are published methods. Naming the one you applied, with a source, makes the scoring assessable rather than arbitrary.
Give the status quo a real number. The cost of continuing as now, in the same units as the options, over the same period. Papers that treat doing nothing as costless have removed the strongest argument for acting.
Be explicit about equity effects. Options frequently differ in who benefits: which patients, which units, which shifts, which communities. Where an option concentrates benefit or burden unevenly, say so and support it, because that is a legitimate executive criterion and an increasingly expected one.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Strawman alternatives. Two real options and one nobody would choose is a decision already made and dressed as an analysis.
- Criteria written after the choice. A criteria list that maps exactly onto one option's strengths is visible to any experienced reader.
- No status quo option. Leaving out doing nothing removes the baseline every executive decision is actually measured against.
- Opportunity cost omitted. A recommendation that never says what is displaced has not engaged with the reason the decision is difficult.
- A table with no reasoning. Scores without derivation cannot be argued with, which means they cannot be trusted either.
Before you submit
- Every option plausibly addresses the constraint identified earlier
- Criteria are stated and justified before any evaluation appears
- Each option carries its own supporting evidence with sources
- Doing nothing appears as a costed option
- Effects are expressed in comparable units or compared within criteria
- The recommendation states what the organization forgoes
- Conditions that would reorder the options are named with what to monitor
Writing the options analysis for NR-720?
Send the rubric and your candidate options out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours with criteria justified in advance, the status quo costed and the opportunity cost stated, and revisions run until the grade lands.