A multi-attribute group decision support system for information technology project selection

The increasing intensity of global competition and the rapid advances in information technology (IT) have led organisations to search for more efficient and effective ways to manage their business. With the rapid growth of IT and global complexity, selecting information system projects that further business objectives has become a complex task. This complexity is due to a larger number of alternatives, multiple and often conflicting attributes, and an increasingly turbulent business environment. Traditional assessment techniques overemphasise quantitative and economic analysis and often neglect to consider qualitative and non-economic factors in the formal selection process. Furthermore, prior research for IT project selection does not consider interdependencies among candidate projects. In this paper, a comprehensive multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approach for IT project selection is proposed. This decision model is illustrated by a case study of enterprise information system project selection at a textile manufacturer in Philadelphia. The proposed approach considers both quantitative and qualitative attributes as well as the interdependencies among candidate projects in a hybrid model that integrates the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) with multi-objective decision-making (MODM). MADM is used for the sorting or the ranking of the IT projects according to multiple attributes, and MODM is used for driving a vector optimisation-based solution.