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Software evolution decision-making is important. Decisions can be made by an individual or a group.Currently it is not known how decision-making is organized in software industry. However, that knowledge is needed to improve the decision-making processes. Therefore, we have studied 29 decisionmaking experts, who were involved in software evolution decision-making. The study was performed with qualitative methods, which enabled the gathering of versatile information concerning the views of the decision-makers. The study revealed group decisions are widely used both in private and public organizations and attitudes towards them are generally positive or neutral. The study provided information about usage of groups in the preparation phase of the decisions and in the actual decision-making phase. In most cases groups were used in the preparation phase. The revealed decision-making process is related to two theoretical process models. The findings help to understand industrial decision-making in this important, but empirically surprisingly scarcely studied area.

This paper describes the results of an empirical study focusing on software modernization decision making in software industry. 29 decision making experts were interviewed. The main aim was to gather versatile information about their views by posing 26 questions concerning decision making. Topics of interest of these questions included: decision makers, decision making process, used and needed methods and tools, confirmation of decisions, and decision criteria. Six important themes were identified and discussed: role of intuition, economical evaluation, confirmation of the decisions, group decision making, tool support, and success and limitations of the conducted empirical study. The most important findings include the following: use of intuition in decision making is polarized, economical evaluation is important and pursued but reliable estimation of benefits is hard to achieve, decisions are seldom confirmed, group decision support aspects appear to be important, and tool support for expert judgment needs to be improved.

Software modernization and replacement decisions are crucial to many organizations. They affect greatly to the success and well being of the organizations and their people. The decisions like that are usually presumed to be rational and based on facts. These decisions and how they are made tell much about the decision makers and the decision making tools available to them. Interviews of 29 software modernization decision makers or senior experts were analyzed in order to find out how the decisions were made and what models and tools were used. It turned out that decisions are not as rational as supposed. Intuition is the dominant factor in decision making. Formal software engineering oriented decision support methods are not used. Most decision makers did not see intuition as a preferable way to make decisions. This might be because the preferred values are rationality and formality. Since the use of intuition is not particularly valued it is not necessarily admitted or documented either. However, truthful description and justification of decisions is important both from the practical and ethical point of views.

Abstract:Decisions regarding information system evolution strategy become topical as the organisation's information systems age and start to approach the end of their life cycle. An interview study was conducted in order to compare factors influencing modernisation and replacement initiation. System age, obsolete technology and high operation or maintenance costs were identified as triggers for both modernisation and replacement projects. The results show that the most prevalent individual reason for modernisation initiative is business development. Common initiation factors for replacement projects were end of vendor support and system's inability to respond to organisation's business needs.