Prioritising information systems projects in higher education

This paper focuses on solving the problem faced by higher education institutions (HEIs) when prioritising information systems (IS) projects. In many instances HEIs face many more potential IS projects than they can cope with. Making good decisions as to which projects should be supported becomes a complex but crucial issue. In practice, managers may resort to simple heuristics or rules of thumb to decide on projects that should be evaluated against competing objectives. In such complex situations structured approaches exist such as multi‐criteria decision making. The case study reported here explores the application of such a technique, simple multi‐attribute rating technique (SMART), to support the IS Department of Leeds University when prioritising IS projects.

[1]  R. Hämäläinen,et al.  On the measurement of preferences in the analytic hierarchy process , 1997 .

[2]  T. Davenport.  Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[3]  A. Stam,et al.  Stochastic Judgments in the AHP: The Measurement of Rank Reversal Probabilities , 1997 .

[4]  A. Rasheed,et al.  Making More by Doing Less: An Analysis of Outsourcing and its Effects on Firm Performance , 2000 .

[5]  M. Bensaou,et al.  The right mind-set for managing information technology. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[6]  Ward Edwards,et al.  How to Use Multiattribute Utility Measurement for Social Decisionmaking , 1977, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[7]  David Boddy,et al.  Prescriptions for managing change: a survey of their effects in projects to implement collaborative working between organisations , 2000 .

[8]  Ernest H. Forman,et al.  Multi Criteria Decision Making and the Analytic Hierarchy Process , 1990 .

[9]  Mark Keil,et al.  Turning Around Troubled Software Projects: An Exploratory Study of the Deescalation of Commitment to Failing Courses of Action , 1999, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[10]  Stephen R. Watson,et al.  Structuring Multi-attribute Value Hierarchies , 1987 .

[11]  Patrick T. Harker,et al.  The Analytic hierarchy process : applications and studies , 1989 .

[12]  R. Nolan,et al.  How to Manage an IT Outsourcing Alliance , 1995 .

[13]  Valerie Belton,et al.  Remarks on the application of the analytic hierarchy process to judgmental forecasting , 1996 .

[14]  F. V. Krumm,et al.  Management and Application of Decision and Risk Analysis in Du Pont , 1992 .

[15]  F. Warren McFarlan,et al.  Corporate information systems management : text and cases , 1988 .

[16]  F. H. Barron,et al.  SMARTS and SMARTER: Improved Simple Methods for Multiattribute Utility Measurement , 1994 .