INSTRUCTOR: Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Systems/Software, Inc.

AUDIENCE: Software practitioners and managers who make decisions about process, risk, estimation, measurement and testing Other decision-makers, such as those who must choose a suitable technical solution, a subcontractor, or a COTS product

KEY FEATURES:

• Discover what we know about decision-making and use it to improve the way you make decisions on your software development and maintenance projects.
• Learn how to improve your estimates by doing more with less.
• Leverage your expertise, and learn how to offer your staff the right blend of experience and training.
• Make more effective decisions, even when you are working in web time!

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: We don't manage or measure or make decisions in a vacuum. We need to make decisions and take action relating to our products, processes and resources, quickly making products better while maintaining high quality. But we are not the only discipline making these kinds of decisions. In this workshop, we look at examples from business, public policy, and social science as well as information technology to see what we can learn about how to make good decisions. Then we apply the techniques to real software development and maintenance problems. The result? Better estimates, reduced risk, and more confidence in our ability to choose the right course of action.

The decision-making is also viewed from a business context. How do our decisions about technology affect our business, our clients, and our business's bottom line? In this workshop, we will learn techniques for making the best of our experience and expertise to enhance our companies' reputation, actions and results. This is an interactive workshop; participants will be actively engaged in exercises and discussions the illustrates the major points. These practical examples and exercises will focus on how to enhance decision-making on the job.

TOPICAL OUTLINE:
Decision-making on software projects
    Project planning: estimating resources and risks
    Project assessment: effectiveness of processes, products and resources
    Project change: fixing problems, evaluating alternative actions
    Project testing: weighing alternatives when you can't test everything
    Product maintenance: resource allocation, risk and estimation
How we think we make decisions
    Workshop exercise
    Survey of decision science techniques
How we really make decisions
    Workshop exercise
    Listening to the data
    Comparing categories
    The recognition-primed decision model
Enhancing decision-making
    Using intuition
    Doing mental simulations
    Looking for leverage points
    Metaphors and analogs
    Team effects
    Stress effects
    Uncertainty and variability
    Stereotype threat
The role of expertise
    What is an expert?
    Errors of judgment
    How expertise relates to errors
Guidelines for making good decisions
Applying what we know
    Example: risk management
        How public policies are evaluated for risk, how it differs from software risk management, and what we can learn
    Example: cost estimation
        Data from a large multinational company show that expert judgment is often the best estimating technique
    Example: technology transfer
        How we must take into account our audience's work style when making technology decisions