Restoring Decision-Making

This part focuses on restoring decision-making in environments where assumptions are incomplete and uncertainty cannot be eliminated.

In actual development and maintenance contexts,
assumptions needed for decisions are almost never stably in place.

Specifications are fragmentary,
stakeholder understanding fluctuates,
and temporal and organizational constraints also act simultaneously.
Nevertheless, decisions must continue to be taken on.

This chapter addresses
how to restore and sustain decision-making capability on the assumption that uncertainty remains.

Complete understanding or comprehensive consensus is not the goal.
By establishing minimal fixed points,
we organize a framework for advancing situations.

Position of This Chapter

Restoring Decision-Making Under Uncertainty is
a counterpart chapter to Failure Patterns.

While Failure Patterns
describe "what breaks how,"
this chapter addresses how to take on decisions in situations that are broken or on the verge of breaking.

What is indicated here
is not a comprehensive coverage of general requirements engineering or project management.
It targets minimal configurations
for not falling into inability to decide under incomplete situations.

Themes Addressed

The content addressed in this chapter
is not a guide for applying specific design methodologies or processes.

Each topic in Failure Patterns or Why It Breaks is not a classification for identifying causes or deriving correct answers, but is used as a perspective for taking on decisions.

The following are arranged in the order: concept → application → strategy → extension,
but they need not necessarily be read in order.

• The minimal set that should be decided and handling of the domain not decided
• Requirement Analysis under incomplete assumptions
• Design of intervention strategy with reference to Failure Pattern
• Fixing assumptions for using AI as an accelerator

This assumes using Failure Pattern not as causes, but as reference points for decisions.