A Decision Aid for Selecting Among Information System Alternatives

Many information system selection decisions, software decisions, hardware decisions, and project selection decisions involve characteristics that are of a qualitative nature. Present methodologies either ignore the problem of selecting qualitative attributes, or require the assignment of a numerical value to a qualitative variable in order to make a choice involving qualitative benefits. These approaches require application of artificial measures to qualitative variables. A procedure that overcomes these difficulties for selection problems with known alternatives is presented. The procedure is an implicit enumeration procedure based on properties of preference theory, requires no formal optimization procedure, and would be simple to implement in an interactive decision setting involving selection from among a set of known alternatives.