The Evaluation of Information Technology Projects: A Fuzzy Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach

Abstract

This paper presents a fuzzy set-based approach to the evaluation of information technology (IT) projects. We assume a multi-criteria decision-making framework, where sets of general and domain-specific criteria are used to judge the relative performance of alternative technologies. The methodology was originally developed for DIAS.net, an EU project aiming at the development of the Information Society in insular and isolated regions of Europe. In this paper, we present many aspects of our evaluation framework, including the synthesis of evaluation teams, the assessment of the importance of criteria, the evaluation of the performance of the alternatives and the final ranking and selection of projects. The methodology presented has the innovative feature of embodying techniques of fuzzy sets theory into the classical multi-criteria decision analysis. This combination enables us to handle efficiently the subjectiveness that often characterizes expert judgements on a decision problem. Fuzzy linguistic terms, such as "poor," "fair," "very important," etc. are proposed for assessing the relative merit of alternatives and criteria. The paper concludes by exploring the potentiality of the above methodology in providing a flexible and robust IT evaluation framework.

Using a minimal fuzzy covering in decision-making problems

“…The existing literature clearly supports the use of fuzzy set theory and soft-computing techniques to further expand the human ability to make optimal decisions involving non-probabilistic uncertainty [2,3,6,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…In particular, fuzzy set theory is used quite effectively in decision-making systems [1][2][3][11][12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20][21][23][24][25] since information fuzziness is a typical property of any system of this kind. Frequently, the main sources of information used in the construction of such systems are expert knowledge and representations of knowledge.…”

The Fuzzy Evaluation of the Ict Projects in Strategic Environment (Case Study: Iran Telecommunication Research Center)

“…11,46,49,50,[69][70][71] But, in this research, the most suitable parameters which have a high correlation to ICT project selection in ICT research center, especially in Iran is used. The selected criteria are related to the potential strategic competition of the ICT projects for ITRC.…”

Tools for Assessment of Intellectual Assets of Enterprise Based on Fuzzy Information

“…The improvement of multi-criteria models, like AHP and PROMEETE [1,7,23,32,38] The implementation of fuzzy logic in the analysis of projects [5, 12, 13, 17 19, 24, 37] The problem of IT-projects evaluation is the large number of inputs and the lack of quantified information on them. Gunasekaran et al [11] have analyzed IT-projects evaluation, including analysis of material and intangible benefits.…”