Decision-Making in the Presence of Uncertainty

Making decisions is part of spending other people's money, Risk Management, and our everyday lives. Many of the decisions we make in our lives are qualitative. When we're spending other people's money, we need to make quantitative decisions based on tangible evidence. This evidence can be from past decisions and their outcomes or from a?model of future?outcomes.

There are six attributes of decision-making in our software-intensive system of systems (SISoS) domain:

1. The complexity?of the system used to develop the products or services being paid for by our customer
2. The focus on relationships and the quality of the deliverables from this development work
3. The movement from the technology to the user's perception of the value of that technology
4. The recognition that it's the?system we're after rather than the collection of?parts
5. The availability of low-cost, rapid-development systems
6. The secularization of knowledge?of how to solve problems is replacing the high priests of our software solutions with generally available?knowledge or even?packaged solutions. The movement from?coding by punching holes in small cardboard sheets to?clicking on entire solution packages.

Complexity is not substantially?increased by additions to the number?of things. High levels of complexity arise from the increased number of relationships?between the things - Decision and Control: The Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics , Stafford Beer.

Beer's 1966 book lays out the principles of decision-making in the presence of uncertainty found in software development today. These principles are immutable and have often been either ignored or rediscovered as new.

Beer tells us things increase typically at arithmetic rates and occasionally at geometric rates. In contrast, relations can and do increase at geometric rates of the growth rate of things.?

What is a Decision?

A simple answer is to make up your mind. That is, taking a decision is best described as fixing?a belief? [1]. Going beyond this, a decision?is the?deliberate act of selection, from a set of competing alternatives ... in the belief that the action will accomplish the desired goal [2]

References

[1]?Decision and Control: The Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics, Stafford Beer, page 1.

[2]?Decision Making: Creativity, Judgement, and Systems, Edited by Henry S. Brinkers, Ohio State University Press, 1972.