Posts under ‘Decision making’

At the recent Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lisamarie Babik of Menlo Innovations gave an excellent talk entitled “Beginners Mind”. For those not familiar with the expression, the term refers to the open and receptive state of mind that we have when we’re beginners at something. The concept is based on […]

For earlier parts of this post read : Part 1 – Dismissal, Part 2 – Denial and Part 3 – Disbelief A key question for those leading technology projects is; how do we prevent the Senior Management team from falling into the “Dismissal, Denial and Disbelief” trap? Given the hierarchical structure in most organizations, that […]

For earlier parts of this post read : Part 1 – Dismissal, Part 2 – Denial The dismissal and denial processes create the illusion of progress, but unfortunately behind the illusion lies the cold reality that the project is deeply flawed. Failure to address the underlying issues allows the project`s errors and omissions to keep on […]

For part 1 of this post read “Dismissal” While dismissal is an easy way to bypass dissent at project start up, as work progresses physical manifestations of the underlying problems start to appear. Senior Managers who had dismissed the team’s original concerns often find themselves facing information that shows a worry trend. In a rational […]

Scott Ambler published an interesting survey in 2007. One of the questions asked people if they had ever participated in a project which they knew, right from the start, was going to fail. Of the 538 respondents, 70% answered yes. Even making some allowance for the inaccuracies inherent in any survey, that’s a staggering result. […]

In the game show, “Who wants to be a millionaire” contestants answer trivia questions by selecting one of four possible answers. The game show host often makes a big deal out of having the contestant make a commitment to their selected choice and one of the catch phrases from the show is “lock in that […]

When I ask teams to look back at a decision they made that didn’t work out as they had envisaged, they are frequently able to come up with one or more different alternatives that would have resulted in a very different outcome. While seeing such alternatives after the event is a useful learning exercise, it’s […]

Although making decisions is a part of our everyday lives, we rarely stop to think about how we make them. Given the central role that decision making plays in a technology project, an understanding of the ways in which individuals and groups make decisions is a valuable tool for those who hold leadership roles. One […]