How group decisions are made by architects? We run a study with a number of practitioners trying to understand how group decision making is done by architects. This presentation summarizes some of the results presented at the WICSA 2014 conference on Software Architecture (http://wicsa2014.org/index.php/programme/technical-programme/)

1. Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
A Study on Group Decision-Making in
Software Architecture
Smrithi Rekha V.
Amrita Vishwa, Vidyapeetham, India
smrithirekha@gmail.com
Henry Muccini, Ph.D.
University of L’Aquila, Italy
henry.muccini@univaq.it
@muccinihenry, henrymuccini.com
Presented @ WICSA 2014, Sydney, Australia

2. 2
Multiple stakeholders are involved
Each with different concerns and goals
Decision
Making
Tech.
Stakeh
olders
Custo
mers
…
…
Busin
ess
Final
User
Archite
cts
42010:2011
SA decision-making is a group process

3. 3
SA results from a Group Decision Making (GDM)
process
While methods and tools have been
proposed to record ADD and their rationale
More can be done
for handling GDM
in Software Architecture

4. 4
Three decades of research on group
decision making in the business domain
GDM Research
Perspectives
Processes and Methods Impact of factors like size,
diversity, roles, tasks
Challenges
Comparative Studies: Various
methods, Individual vs Group Issues: Groupthink, Group
Shift
Conflict Resolution
Process
Enhancement
Pros and Cons
GDM has been studied from multiple
perspectives that includes
Psychology, Organizational
Behavior, Operations Research and
Economics Picture taken from http://apprentiperpetuel.blogspot.com.au/

5. 5
how practitioners make group decisions in
architecting software systems
how state of the practice GDM in SA relates
to state-of-the-art GDM techniques
challenges companies face when making
architecture-related group decisions
To understand
RQ1
RQ2
RQ3

6. 6
Online questionnaire
38 questions
Q1-Q14: personal and company
info
Q15-Q25: undertaken SA group
decision-making process
Q26-Q31: SOTP vs SOTA SA GDM
process in industry
and methods available in
literature
Q32-Q36: challenges
30 respondents
23 practitioners involved
in SA GDM
7 academics knowning
about SA GDM in industry

7. 64% architects
21% sw development
15% top management
3-16 years of experience
 5-10 people involved in
decision making
 21 different macro-
roles represented
 80%-20% distributed-
colocated
 Distributed:
 54% uses only synch comm.
media
 4% asynch only
 50% uses tools to support
the ADD process
7
MAIN FINDINGS (1/3)

8.  Drivers: time, cost and quality
 Decision pattern: group
discussion -> if no agreement, a
leader/small group decides
(35%)
 57% uses a mix of GDM methods
Stakeholders are given different
priority: seniority
(55%), business, political and
technological factors
(25%), individuals (10%)
8
MAIN FINDINGS (2/3)
how practitioners arrive at a
consensus

9. Conflicts: may occur due to
 socio-cultural reasons
 technical reasons
 cost
9
MAIN FINDINGS (3/3)
GroupThink
appears evident!!
arriving at
consensus becomes
more important than
individual opinions

10.  Time-bounded decisions
 Improved documentations
 Tool support improvement
 Peculiarities of GDM in SA
 Exploring into causes and
possible mitigation
strategies for GDM issues
 metrics for group decision
quality
 …
C. Miesbauer and R. Weinreich
@ECSA 2013
D. Tofan, M. Galster, and P. Avgeriou
@ ECSA 2013
Shahin, Liang, Khayyambashi, @WIC
SA/ECSA 2009
M. Nowak and C. Pautasso @ WICSA
2012
T. Al-Naeem, I. Gorton, M. Babar, F.
Rabhi, and B. Benatallah @ICSE 2005
10

11. If you are interested to this research, please
11
Stop by after the presentation
Contact me at henry.muccini@univaq.it
Tweet @muccinihenry
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