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.
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.
Software systems are evolving all the time. Important decisions are needed to make whether to modernize a system or totally replace it. Group decisions have become popular also in this kind of decision-making. In this study we are interested why groups are used. We also want to find out are there any differences in public and private sector decisions. Our research approach is qualitative. Research material is collected by semi-structured interviews and analysis is done using content analysis and identifying themes. As a main result, we found out that groups are used to get expert opinions, get users' opinions, share the responsibility and for special reasons. There were similarities in public and private sector decision-making. We suggest that groups are partly used to make decisions as good as possible but, on the other hand, groups are used to avoid responsibility.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.