[ba-ohs-talk] IBIS question

[Johannes Ernst <jernst@r-objects.com>]

We have incorporated IBIS into our product, Pepper, and it is very 
useful at "putting all the facts on the table" in order to enable 
informed decision-making by a person based on those facts.    (01)

However, I'm not convinced that it can do much in order to actually 
help making the decision, and then record the reasons for a decision. 
Why? Because deciding on anything non-trivial involves lots of pros 
and cons for lots of ideas, but the decision is never clear-cut. It 
is always a tradeoff, and I'm not sure how to use IBIS to capture 
that tradeoff and the conditions under which one would redo the 
decision.    (02)

Simplistic example:
Question: How can we meet the customer requirement "product needs to 
run faster"?
- Idea: Buy a new computer for the customer
     Pro: product will run faster
     Con: substantial customer confusion and installation issues
- Idea: Redesign XYZ component in the product
     Pro: seamless upgrade for the customer
     Con: long design cycle    (03)

There's no clear "right" idea here -- the obvious alternatives are:
1) go with idea 1
2) go with idea 2
3) go with idea 1 for 6 months, redesign product in the meantime, go 
with idea 2 for 6 months thereafter.    (04)

What I'd like to express are things like "our plan of action is 
alternative 1 because we only have X customers right now, and the ROI 
for alternative 2 is not good enough given that it's only X 
customers, but once X has grown above Y, we will change to 
alternative 3". IMHO, that would be much more useful because that 
would capture not just the facts, but also the course of action and 
the tradeoffs.    (05)

So my question: is anyone aware of any work that extends base IBIS to 
help with this scenario?    (06)

I appreciate it. Cheers,    (07)


Johannes Ernst
R-Objects Inc.    (08)