These steps are not necessarily taken in precisely this order, nor are all of them necessarily significant in every problem. However, an effort to define the problem is usually the right starting place, and telling the story is almost inevitably the ending point. Constructing alternatives and selecting criteria for evaluating them must surely come toward the beginning of the process. Assembling some evidence is actually a step that recurs throughout the entire process, and it applies particularly to efforts to define the problem and to project the outcomes of the alternatives being considered.