Week 4 - teamwork and collaborative decision making

Concept 1

 Team is a group of people will a full set of complementary skills working together
towards a common goal, a group doesn’t consider skills.
 Collaboration – can be difficult or expensive, essential for current organisations
regardless of structure
used to: make decisions, review information and decisions, solve problems, build trust, share
vision/workload, build consensus.

 Process gains – problem/solution responsibility and ownership, members committed to

solution as they were part of the process, error detection
Greater information: knowledge creation and combination, more alternatives and creativity and
better solutions e.g.- simulation
Synergy – effectiveness – sum of individual products or workload, communication often
improved, balance of risk/moderation

 Process losses : groupthink, time consuming, lack of coordination/poor planning of

meetings, fear of contribution, free riders, domination of discussion, solution may be
compromised and low quality, non-productive time, meeting costs, information
incomplete/overload, attention or concentration blocking, incorrect task analysis

Concept 2

 Belbin’s nine team roles (monitor evaluator and complete finisher),

 Idea creator – outside the box thinker, generate ideas for problem solving,
 Information gather- competition, new trends, best practice, searches, potential
solutions
 Decision maker- clarify goals, leadership, directive and conceptual
 Implementer – controls current status, measures impact of decision, loyalty
characteristic, efficient and self -disciplined, measures progress towards goal
 Influencer – presenter, persuasive
 Energizer – infuse energy into the team, behavioural, drive to overcome obstacles,
provide endurance for the team, help avoid struggling when under pressure
 Relationship manager- behavioural, socially intelligent, conflict resolver, running the
team smoothly

Team contract
 Signed by all members
 Participation, communication, conflict management, distribution of responsibility (face
to face and online, what topics to do, equal input for work)
  Ground rules for your team
Concept 3 – team development and communication strategies

 Forming
 Storming
 Norming
 Performing
 Adjourning

Week 5 - decision support systems

Concept 1 what is it

 Dss supports decision making (interactive, flexible, adaptable, developed by end user for
supporting the solution to a specific non structured or semi structured management
problem, use data, information and knowledge, incorporate uses wisdom or insight,
support all decision-making phases, single or multi user
 Dss is not sunonumous with bi
 Although some may run locally as a spreadsheet both dss and bi uses web

 Business analytics (implies the use of models and data to improve performance)
 Web analytics (implies using business analytics on real time web information), often
related to e-commerce
 Predictive analytics (describes the business analytics method of forecasting problems
and opportunities)
Dss classifications

 Communications driven and group dss (use computer, collaboration and communication
technologies for group support
 Data driven dss (involved with processing data into information)
 Document driven dss (rely on knowledge coding, analysis, searching retrieval)
 Knowledge driven dss (application of knowledge technologies to address specific
decision support needs)
 Model driven dss (developed primarily around one or more optimization or simulation
models)
 Compound dss (hybrid dss including two or more of the previously method dss
categories)

Other dss categories

 Institutional (recurring decisions)
 Ad hoc (unstructured strategic decisions)
 Personal, group, and organizational support
 Individual support system vs group support system
 Custom made systems vs ready-made systems
Concept 2 – systems and users

 Data management subsystem (includes the database that contains the data, DBMS, can
be connected to a data warehouse)
 Model management subsystem (MBMS)
 User interface system (link between user and background using system)
 Knowledge management subsystem (organizational knowledge base specific to
organisation)

Overall capabilities of dss

 Easy access to data/models/knowledge
 Proper management of organizational experiences and knowledge
 Easy to use/adaptive and flexible graphical user interface
 Timely, correct, concise, consistent support for decision making
 Support for all who needs it, where and when he or she needs it

Database management subsystem key data issues

 Data quality (garbage in/garbage out. GIGO). Incorrect data than result is wrong
 Data integration (creating a single version of the truth). Don’t want customer data when
name and contact is reported more than once in the system – update all not just one
 Scalability – increase in size
 Data security
 Timeliness – updated
 Completeness
Dss user

 One faced with a decision that an MSS is designed to support (manager, decision maker,
problem solver)
 The user differ greatly from each other (organizational positions, cognitive abilities,
decision styles)
 User = individual vs group
 Managers vs staff specialists (staff assistants, expert tool users, business (system
analysts, facilitators (in a GSS).

Concept 3 – expert systems

 Imitate expert’s reasoning processes & knowledge in solving specific problems

 Most popular applied AI technology (enhance productivity and augment work forces)
 Works best with narrow problem areas/tasks
 Expert systems don’t not replace experts, but (make their knowledge and experience
more widely and thus permit non-experts to work better)

Structure of ES
- Knowledge base (for understanding, formulating and solving problems, facts and rules)
- Interface engine (rule interpreter or control structure, provide reasoning methodology
to formulate conclusion, directions of how to use system knowledge by organising and
controlling steps to solve problems
- User interface (language processor for friendly, problem orientated communications,
mostly graphical or text question/answer interaction)
The human element in ES

- Expert (has the special knowledge, judgment, experience and methods to give advice
and solve problems)
- Knowledge engineer (helps the expert(s) structure the problem area y interpreting and
integrating human answers)
- User
- Others (system analyst, builder and support staff)