Decision making in software project management

DECISION MAKING

K.PRIYADARSHINIMsc – IT

2010242015

DEFINITION

The process of examining your possibilities options, comparing them, and choosing a course of action.

Process of making a conscious choice between 2 or more alternatives producing most desirable consequences (benefits) relative to unwanted consequences (costs).

Categories – Way 1

Structured : Simple, routine decisions where rules can be applied in straight forward way.

Unstructured : More Complex and often require degree of creativity.

Example : Structured- Which Chocolate to buy with the given money that we have?

Example : Unstructured – Dealing with Labour strike in an industry.

Categories – Way 2

Amount of Risk Involved in the decision.

Uncertainty that is involved in the decision.

Example : Risky – Entrepreneurs starting up new business with their own finance (from property sold)

Example : Uncertainty –Investing in share market for returns.

Mental obstacles to good decision making

Many a time we have to use out intuition to take decisions. But there can be some mental blocks:

Heuristics (rules of thumb) can be useful until:

Faulty Heuristic : based on info on hand so it can be misleading.

Based on stereotype decision, eg:believing that somebody is worthless just because of not getting good marks.

Escalation of Commitment : Once you decided on something you tend not to change it even when there is a proof that it is wrong.

Information Overload : you have so much of info on hand that you will not be able to decide anything.

Group Decision Making

Decisions made by a team is more accepted that those imposed.

Complex problem solving is easy in a group.

Brainstorming may be done.

Obstacles to Group decision making

Time consuming. Conflicts can stir up. Decisions influenced by dominating

people in group. People tend to modify their personal

judgement just to conform to group norms.

Sometimes people take decisions that are more risky in groups than as individuals. This is known as risky shift.

Measures taken to the obstacles: Delphi technique

Problem is presented to experts. Cooperation of a number of experts. Experts record their recommendations. These recommendations are collated and

reproduced. Responses are re-circulated. Experts comment on the ideas of others

and may change their recommendations. If the leader detects an agreement that is

arrived generically then the process is stopped.

Team Heedfulness

Group members are aware of activities of others that contribute to overall group success.

‘Collective Mind’ comes from: Shared understanding Familiarity Good communication.

Applications : Egoless programming, Chief Programmer teams and Scrum.

Egoless Programming

Programmers become over protective of their coded modules and do not share them.

Gerald Weinberg introduced the concept of ‘peer code reviews’ which made the codes as a common property.(egoless)

Example: At apple different VPs had differences between them. But Steve jobs made sure that they ditched their differences because innovative products can not be made with VPs who do not cooperate with each other.

Chief Programmer Team

Larger the development teamLesser is the work done due toInteraction. Brooks suggestion : reduceTeam size and improve trainingand productivity. Result was Chief Programmer Team. The Chief Programmer defines the

specification, designs, codes, tests and documents the software.

Co- Pilot for assistance Editor for documentation

Program Clerk to maintain actual code

Tester for testing the code Example : The Director of a film

defines the role to be done by the hero in the movie.

Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming promotes ‘Collective Mind’.

Refactors (rewrites) the code according to current standard to make the code clearly convey the system.

Example: Windows Update.

Scrum

The name comes from Rugby scrums where team members push to achieve the goal.

Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile software development framework for managing software projects and product or application development.

A process that focuses on delivering the highest business value in the shortest time.

Sprint

A short period of time during which specific work has to be completed.(1 to 4 weeks)

Sprints are carried out by groups with 7 to 10 developers.

Progress of sprints is marked by small meetings each day.

Example of Scrum: Swift Dzire car was manufactured soon after the release of Swift due to space constraint reasons reported by customers.

Scrum Framework

THANK YOU