An Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach to Information Systems Development

神奈川県茅ヶ崎市表紙著者名 : 真鍋, 龍太郎 The strategic planning of information systems has been considered a critical issue for management. But there are few tools available for structuring the objectives and scope of the system in the planning stage. This paper at first gives a brief and tutorial introduction to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is a widely-used decision analysis tool to evaluate multiple alternatives under conflicting objectives. This process constructs a hierarchy to describe the whole problem, decomposes a complex decision problem into subproblems, and makes an overall evalution of alternatives under conflicting objectives. The author applied the AHP to planning information systems as a way of identifying objectives and areas to be covered by new sysyems. Generally speaking, a hierarchy which describes the development project in a framework of goal, objectives and alternatives is created at the beginning, then refined and evaluated through activities in the planning stage. This process enables management and the development team to communicate with each other better than would occur without the AHP, because they share with each other their understanding of the objectives sought. Mitchell & Wasil(1989) is one of the earliest applications of the AHP to planning information systems and selecting the application areas from a number of alternatives under multiple criteria. The present author used the AHP in an earlier stage of development and showed a way to clarify the objectives of the development with the AHP. This approach enhances the Critical Success Factor method proposed by Rockart(1979) and Rockart & Crescenzi(1984) by providing a more detailed evaluation of the factors involved. A case study that used the AHP in planning a system for a company producing and selling non-alcoholic beverages and confectionery in Japan is presented. Further research on how to integrate AHP procedures in the methodology of systems development is presented by a separate paper (Manabe et al., 1991)