Group Decision-Making Processes in Industrial Software Evolution

Abstract

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.

An Investigation of the Decision-Making Process in Agile Teams

“…The decision process that SDLC teams follow is similar to their development process as prior research concludes that SDLC teams use a rational decision-making (RDM) model for requirements engineering decision-making 14 and for software evolution projects 15 . RDM models assume decision-makers are fully informed 16,17 and define decision-making as an optimal way of choosing between a number of alternatives 18 , often in a linear, sequential manner 19 .…”

“…Similar to the rational decision process 30 outlined above, Mintzberg's 20 first phase, the Problem Identification phase, identifies the problem via two steps: decision recognition, which identifies opportunities and problems evoking decision activity; and diagnosis, where decision-makers try to make sense of the opportunities and problems to understand the decision situation and its cause-effect relationships 20,31 .…”

“…This phase is the core of the decision-making process and requires the greatest amount of resources 20,31 .…”

“…It includes three steps: the screening step removes infeasible solutions quickly without intense evaluation, the evaluation step evaluates the remaining solutions to determine which is appropriate, and the authorization step authorizes the accountable decision-maker to implement the solution. The overall decision process may include many selection phases because the development phase often involves breaking one decision into multiple subdecisions each requiring their own selection phase 20,31 . This seminal RDM process was initially developed to examine unstructured strategic decisions 20 and has been adapted for SDLC research teams focusing on software modernization and evolution 15 and requirements engineering decisions 14 .…”

“…RDM models assume decision-makers are fully informed 16,17 and define decision-making as an optimal way of choosing between a number of alternatives 18 , often in a linear, sequential manner 19 . Research on software evolution projects 15 …”