Comprehending Decisions

In the context of IT Governance, a decision taken by either an individual or a team can have both the postive and negative impact on overall the goal set out by an organization. However that does not stop people from taking the decisions. The key here is analyze the circumstances under which various decisions (both which had a positive impact as well as negative) were taken over a period of time and correct the mechanisms for decision making.
Here we have tried to describe different dimensions of a decision. These key dimensions are integrated in a model created by us for enabling decisions.

1. People who take the decisions
The person who is makes the decision should also be accountable for the consequences (good or bad) of taking that decision. Without accountablity the decision maker may not be bothered to take an effective decision. For e.g. if a person is asked to commit on the estimates for a project which he is not going to execute, he may commit to unrealistic deadlines as well just to finish his job.

2. The decision making process by itself
Decision making process can be easily described as as set of steps which are as follows
a. Recognizing the need to take the decision
Many a time decisions are not taken because one fails to recognize the point at which the decision needs to be taken. Recognizing the appropriate decision point considering the facts is a key challenge in the decision making process.

b. Analyzing the various choices (alternatives) available for a decision
Any decision will have atleast 2 alternatives ie yes or no and some may have more depending on the context against which the decision is to be taken. Identifying various alternatives for a decision becomes an important aspect of the decision making process

c. Analyzing information available for each choice(alternatives)
The decision makers need to analyze the information that is available after each alternative before making an actual decision. The information could be considered against various dimensions of information like cost, timeframe, quality, availablity, standardization etc.

d. Final decision and formation of the action plan based on the decision.

3. Characteristics of the Decisions
a. The context against which the decision is made and the effect it will have on the overall goal.
In a sense an IT decision would typically be taken to achieve business goal within the realm of an IT Plan which is derived from IT Goals set for the organization. Decisions can contribute to take the plan forward and can either eliminate hurdles or reduce/eliminate risks to meet IT Goals.

b. The nature of the decision.
By this we mean that a decision could either be a one time decision or something which needs to be taken at regular intervals. For example, buying of a house is generally a one time decision for the individual, so it requires a detailed and a holistic study of various alternatives and information available before reaching to a conclusion. Such decisions have a major impact on the overall goal of the individual.Decision could also be termed as primary decision or review decisions. Primary decisions are the ones which need to be taken intially maybe to start with a new intiative and then it could be regularly reviewed against a set of parameters /criteria. So here again primary decisions taken are critical and hence need to taken with careful study of various alternatives.

c. The inputs required for various alternatives.
Before taking any decision, the effective decision makers have to critically consider all the information that is available against each alternative. One key aspect to be considered would be the reliability of the information. If the information itself is not correct the chances that a decision would fail is very high.

One of the reasons why the information could be wrong is that the source from where this information is derived may not be trustworthy. So realiability of source is an important characteristic of the information available for the decision.

Second reason would be that the information is correct at that point in time, but has the potential to change over a period of interval.
In such scenarios the models created by us classify the input obtained as Static Input -something that would not change and Dynamic input - something that has the potential to change over a period of time.

IT Governance- Decision making made easy

We are a group who think that IT-Governance is playing an important role in an organization, as it can influence IT-Investment decisions and in the process effect the overall organization strategy and business goals.

The attached presentation provides a peek into why we think IT Governance is useful and have come with a product which will aid decision makers in the decision making process.



For further research, we would like to have your comments on what you think about it.