The Situated Nature of Judgement in Engineering Design Planning
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J. S. Busby [1] ; K. Payne [1]
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[1] Crandfield University (GB)
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- Localización: Journal of Engineering Design, ISSN 0954-4828, Vol. 9, Nº. 3, 1998, págs. 271-291
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
An investigation of practising engineers' predictive judgements of activity durations revealed that the circumstances in which they made their judgements had a considerable influence on both judgement outcomes and strategies. The task structure, involving small numbers of lengthy projects, reinforced a strategy of using specific, individuating information to make predictions, instead of distributions of past outcomes. Judgement strategy was also heavily influenced by the judges' individual goals, which in turn were influenced by their organizational roles. This led some to use top-down approaches, using a target cost as anchor, and others to use bottom-up approaches based on a detailed task breakdown. The use of a detailed task breakdown was motivated by other features of the task environment, such as the need to justify predictions, and the need to revise them when planning assumptions changed. In addition, the results suggest that expertise in engineering does not entail expertise in predicting the outcomes of engineering activity, and points to opportunities for training engineers in appropriate prediction practices. They also suggest that research on predictive judgement needs to take account of the judgement environment to which strategies seem to be highly sensitive.
