Group Decision-Making in Software Development

"You have to listen to the people who have a negative opinion as well as those who have positive opinion. Just to make sure that you are blending all these opinions in your mind before a decision is made." - Carlos Ghosn. Group decision making is a very common practice followed in numerous organizations.

In software development, group decision-making also known as collaborative decision- making. It is a situation where individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is no longer attributable to any individual group member as all the individuals and social group process like social influences contribute to the decision outcome. The decision made by groups are mostly different from those made by individuals. For example – groups tends to make decisions that are more extreme than those made by individual members, as individual’s tend to be biased.

Practicing group decision-making has several benefits with it. It has two advantages over individual decision – making: Synergy and Share of information. Synergy is the idea that whole is greater than the aggregate of its parts. When a group makes a decision collectively, its judgment can be powerful than that of any of its members. Through discussing, questioning and collaborative approach, group members can identify more complete and robust solutions and recommendations.

Group decisions also take into account a wider scope of information as each group member may contribute distinct information and expertise. Sharing information increase understanding, clarifies issue, and facilitates movement towards a collective decision.

Every practice has both pros and cons. Along with the benefits group-decision making have some major disadvantages. It involves diffusion of responsibility. Group decision making results in distribution of responsibility that results in lack of accountability for outcomes. Hence, everyone is responsible for a decision, and no one really is. Moreover group decision can make it easier for members to refuse personal responsibilities and blame others for bad decisions.

Group decision in software development making also results lower efficiency. Group decisions can sometimes be less efficient than individual decisions. It takes additional time because there is a need of active participation, discussion and coordination among group members. Without good facilitation and structure, meetings can get eliminated in trivial details that may matter a lot to one person but not to the others.

One of the biggest disadvantage of effective group decision making is groupthink. It is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the wish for harmony or conformity results in an illogical or dysfunctional decision making outcome. By refraining themselves from outside influences and actively suppressing opposing viewpoints in the interest of minimizing conflict, group members reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of substitute viewpoints.

"There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Techno structure "– John Kenneth Galbraith.

Author have more than 10 years experience in software development and product development