Information needs for decision-making

Software	None
Covers	Requirements analysis, business process analysis, data analytics, decison support, optionally expert systems, knowledge engineering
Skills Required	Interest in business applications of computers, informmation management. Good access to or understanding of a particular organization, possibly interest in Artificial Intelligence
Challenge	Conceptual ???? Technical ??? Programming

Brief Description

The aim of this project is to develop a detailed analysis of the information management needs for making particular types of complex decisions within a small or medium sized business, or a medium-sized public sector organization. To be interesting for this kind of project, the decisions need to be either complex, difficult and important, or a frequent part of the organization's activities.

This project involves understanding what information the organization collects and uses, and how this information is handled and communicated within the organization, as well as how it feeds into the target decision making activities. This includes whether it is processed through formal procedures or informally, on paper or through computer systems. It also includes how it is represented computationally and depicted graphically or in words, and whether these representations are fit for purpose.

What decisions do decision-makers within the organization make, and what information do they draw on? How do they access that information? What other information would be valuable, and can it be obtained or calculated cost-effectively and presented in a way that makes it usable? Are the decision-makers bound by procedures, either official or habitual, and are they the right procedures for making good choices?

The project would involve understanding the information needs for particular classes of management decisions, and investigate how that information can be gathered, organized, displayed and processed to support management decision-making. This could lead to the development of a specification for a decison-making procedure to be followed, and/or a specification for a decision support system.

Is the organization making use of appropriate and effective software tools? Are there other software tools that would aid the organization's work enough to justify the cost of acquiring them and the effort of introducing them and using them? Is there a business case for developing a customized software system, or are good systems available off the shelf?

The success of this project will depend entirely on being able to investigate in detail what is really going on in an organization, and what it needs.

Variants

This could be treated and structured as a consultancy project. Ideally it would have a real-life client.

The project could focus on the issues involved in ethical handling of potentially confidential information, both in terms of security and in terms of ethically appropriate use.

For a rather different, less-business-focused, more psychological project that analyzes in detail how decisions get made, see Modelling a decision-making process.

For a rather different, more broad-based project that looks at information usage across the organization, see Information needs for organizational activities.

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