TABLE OF CONTENTS After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Define and describe two types of multi-factor scoring methods.
Use multi-factor scoring methods to make IT investment decision choices.
Describe how the analytic hierarchy process can be used to make IT investment decision choices.
Understand and use the analytic hierarchy process methodology to generate priorities useful in IT decision choices.
Understand and use consistency statistics to support the analytic hierarchy process results.
Understand how spreadsheets can be used to model multi-factor decision-making and analytic hierarchy process problems.
IT investment decisions can be very complex if a wide range of differing factors (or criteria) are used in the decision-making process. For example, purchasing a single PC within an integrated computer system requires consideration of many factors. The selection of one manufacturer's PC over another manufacturer's PC in a network for a university student computer center can include consideration of factors such as purchase price, compatibility with other existing computers, software systems compatibility issues, the computer's features, the manufacturer's brand name, the technical support availability, historic cost of repairs, warrantee support, and flexibility in features for future adaptation with other systems. Moreover, the complexity caused by the number of factors to consider is increased by the differing nature of how the factors will be measured. While "price" and "cost" factors can be easily measured objectively in dollars for a comparison, factors such as "flexibility", "brand name", and "compatibility" have to subjectively be rated by some type of score (i.e., a...
