Different ways of looking at the decision making cycle.

Mishkin Berteig at Agile Advice has a helpful compilation of various ways to look at the decision making process.

Here's his diagram of these different approaches.

What I like about these various styles is that everyone of them requires reflection upon the impact of the decision.

To simply go through a redundant cycle of activity without consideration of effect doesn't make sense.  Yet, for many people once they find their comfort zone, they zone out into that cycle of activity.

There is some good material at Agile Advice.  Read and learn.

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Comments

[Ed Brenegar]

Mishkin, I agree that it is hard for diagrams to show the dynamism in these processes. Our thinking processes combine reflection, analysis, decision, reorientation, all at the same time. So a linear design, even if it is a loop, really doesn't capture it as well as it should.
Yes, I think it was Einstein.

[Mishkin Berteig]

Ed, thanks for the link! I also noticed the consistency of the reflection part (and of course the action part too, but the diagram doesn't reflect it as well since I wanted to be true to the order in which the steps are stated in their original sources). I believe it was Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the results to change.