Characteristics that affect preference of decision models for asset selection: an industrial questionnaire survey

Modern software development relies on a combination of development and re-use of technical asset, e.g., software components, libraries, and APIs. In the past, re-use was mostly conducted with internal assets but today external; open source, customer off-the-shelf (COTS), and assets developed through outsourcing are also common. This access to more asset alternatives presents new challenges regarding what assets to optimally chose and how to make this decision. To support decision-makers, decision theory has been used to develop decision models for asset selection. However, very little industrial data has been presented in literature about the usefulness, or even perceived usefulness, of these models. Additionally, only limited information has been presented about what model characteristics determine practitioner preference toward one model over another. The objective of this work is to evaluate what characteristics of decision models for asset selection determine industrial practitioner preference of a model when given the choice of a decision model of high precision or a model with high speed. An industrial questionnaire survey is performed where a total of 33 practitioners, of varying roles, from 18 companies are tasked to compare two decision models for asset selection. Textual analysis and formal and descriptive statistics are then applied on the survey responses to answer the study's research questions. The study shows that the practitioners had clear preference toward the decision model that emphasized speed over the one that emphasized decision precision. This conclusion was determined to be because one of the models was perceived faster, had lower complexity, was more flexible in use for different decisions, and was more agile on how it could be used in operation, its emphasis on people, its emphasis on good enough precision and ability to fail fast if a decision was a failure. Hence, we found seven characteristics that the practitioners considered important for their acceptance of the model. Industrial practitioner preference, which relates to acceptance, of decision models for asset selection is dependent on multiple characteristics that must be considered when developing a model for different types of decisions such as operational day-to-day decisions as well as more critical tactical or strategic decisions. The main contribution of this work are the seven identified characteristics that can serve as industrial requirements for future research on decision models for asset selection.