Decision analysis emerged as a distinct academic field in 1964, building on developments in statistical decision theory and game theory by Raiffa and systems engineering and dynamic probabilistic systems by Howard. In that year, Raiffa began teaching the first university course in decision analysis within the Department of Economics at Harvard and began preparing material for his 1968 book, Decision Analysis. Also in 1964, but independently, Howard conducted the first professional application of the field he called "decision analysis,” which he described in his 1966 paper, "Decision Analysis: Applied Decision Theory.”

The contributions of Raiffa and Howard allowed the field to grow and develop. Most early applications focused on major capital expenditures or societal investments. Then, with the advance of computing power, the field expanded to incorporate portfolio decisions.

Raiffa took the field into multiparty decisions— collaboration, negotiation, and competition. Howard defined the engineering approach to solving large complex decision problems. Behavioral Decision Science generated insight about how our human nature is likely to lead us astray and how to prevent "predictable irrationality.” The quality movement inspired the field to develop Decision Quality by including the organizational practices to achieve alignment and commitment to action.

Over the last two decades, the field has moved from focusing on specific decisions to achieving Organizational Decision Quality— the culture, governance models, processes, and competencies to allow an organization to achieve decision quality in all of its decisions.