Decision analysis to select a microcomputer networking strategy: A procedure and a case study

A multi-objective decision-analysis procedure is presented which was developed to assist a company in selecting a strategy for dealing with microcomputer networking. Evaluation measures were defined to measure the performance of different strategies, and a multi-attribute utility function was used to combine the evaluation measures into a single index of the overall preferability of each strategy. Uncertainties about the projected performance of various strategies were encoded using probabilities. Advantages of the approach over scoring (weighting and rating) methods that are sometimes used for resource-allocation decisions are reviewed. The case study presented in this article could serve as a starting point for multi-objective decision analyses of other computer information-systems decisions.