Studies conducted in recent years have shown that outcome feedback in dynamic decision-making tasks does not lead to improved performance. This has led researchers to examine alternatives to outcome feedback for improving decision makers' performance in such tasks. This study examines the feasibility of improving performance in dynamic tasks by providing cognitive feedback or feedforward. We report a laboratory experiment in which subjects managed a set of simulated software development projects. Results indicate that subjects provided with cognitive feedback performed best, followed by those provided with feedforward. Subjects provided with outcome feedback performed poorly. We discuss the implications of the results for decision support in dynamic tasks.dynamic decision making, decision support systems, cognitive feedback, feedforward, outcome feedback, software project management

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Human body energy storage operates as a stock-and-flow system with inflow (food intake) and outflow (energy expenditure). In spite of the ubiquity of stock-and-flow structures, evidence suggests that human beings fail to understand stock accumulation and rates of change, a difficulty called the stock–flow failure. This study examines the influence of health care training and cultural background in overcoming stock–flow failure. A standardized protocol assessed lay people’s and health care professionals’ ability to apply stock-and-flow reasoning to infer the dynamics of weight gain/loss during the holiday season (621 subjects from seven countries). Our results indicate that both types of subjects exhibited systematic errors indicative of use of erroneous heuristics. Stock–flow failure was found across cultures and was not improved by professional health training. The problem of stock–flow failure as a transcultural global issue with education and policy implications is discussed.

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Software systems development has been plagued by cost overruns, late deliveries, poor reliability, and user dissatisfaction. This article presents a paradigm for the study of software project management that is grounded in the feedback systems principles of system dynamics.