Some Examples of How to Use 12sprints, The New SAP Collaborative Decision-Making Application

SAP’s decision-focused collaboration project, 12sprints, is now in “open beta”, so that anybody can sign up. Here’s the blurb from the web site explaining what it is: Bring order to chaos and transform teamwork into results quickly. Collaborative decision-making brings together: People - Get everyone on the same page Information - Share documents and data all in plain view Methods - Provide structure with business tools for brainstorming,... [Read More...]

Test Your Decision-Making Skills!

I sometimes sit in a café called “La Terrace” near my home in Paris. It’s next to the Metro stop Ecole Militaire, which is one of the closest stops to the Eiffel Tower. So each time I have my coffee and croissant, some of the 7 million or so visitors to the tower each year come out of the metro and consult this map of the 7th Arrondissement to try to help them figure out which way to go. Here’s a close up – the Eiffel Tower is at the top... [Read More...]

Gartner on Collaborative Decision Making

Gartner has published their take on the new Collaborative Decision Making market (CDM) This report predicts a new style of decision support system — collaborative decision making (CDM) — will emerge in 2009 that combines social software with business intelligence (BI). This combination can dramatically improve the quality of decision making by directly linking the information contained in BI systems with collaborative input gleaned through the... [Read More...]

A New Decision Engine: Hunch, and Guided Analysis for the Enterprise

A new “Decision Engine” called Hunch was launched today. How might this type of technology relate to collaborative decision-making in enterprises? Hunch’s tagline is “Hunch helps you make decisions and gets smarter the more you use it.” From the web site: What is Hunch? Hunch is a new way to help people make all kinds of decisions, such as: Where should I go on vacation? What’s the best US college for me? What kind of smartphone... [Read More...]

Bad Decisions: Just Blame Evolution?

  February 12th 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of naturalist Charles Robert Darwin. He researched, popularized, and will forever be associated with what is probably the biggest idea ever: Evolution. Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still, sadly, many people who don’t believe in it. According to The Economist: "In the United States a Gallup poll conducted last year found that only 14% of people agreed with... [Read More...]

More Milk Please, Ermintrude! A Classic Decision Trap?

According to a recent article published in Scientific American, the authors of study assert that: "Farmers who have named their cows … probably have a better relationship with them. They’re less fearful, more relaxed and less stressed, so that could have an effect on milk yield." And in a separate article: "Placing more importance on knowing the individual animals and calling them by name can — at no extra cost... [Read More...]

Is There Such a Thing as Good Gut Decisions?

Thinking and Emotions are Inextricably Linked It’s long been known that real-life decision-making involves more than just data and logic. For example, people that have lost their sense of emotions find it impossible to make even simple decisions. Donald Norman (author of the classic “The Design of Everyday Things“), in a Scientific American article called “Why Machines Should Fear“, explains: ‘Emotion was traditionally... [Read More...]

Will Computers Ever Help With Decisions? (No)

Executives are still dissatisfied According to the latest surveys, executive dissatisfaction with the information available to them to make decisions is just as bad as when I started working in BI 20 years ago. How can this be? Have the billions invested in BI and information systems proved to be worthless? Will computers ever help with decisions? I believe the bottom line is no, they won’t — but with a big caveat.   Model: Yolande... [Read More...]