A consensus-based multicriteria group decision model for information technology management committees

Reaching consensus on decisions - especially when they involve multiple criteria, uncertainty and risk - is a major challenge that Information Technology (IT) Management Committees routinely face. Multicriteria decision-making models could offer support, but may be cumbersome to use when uncertainty and risk are also to be factored in, as it is common in IT service management contexts, for more comprehensive and realistic decisions. Difficulties arise when committee members, who need not be familiar with estimating uncertainty and describing their own or the organization's risk appetite, have to input such estimates to a decision support model. This paper presents a consensus-seeking, IT decision support model that internally blends interval algebra, utility theory and an extended analytic hierarchy process method to account for uncertainty, risk and multiple criteria, respectively. Consensus seeking is supported by the Delphi technique. The model was implemented in two software tools, designed to require little knowledge by users about the model's internals. Three case studies were undertaken in real companies to validate the model. Face validity results offer evidence the model/tools are useful to IT committee members by dispensing with direct, explicit users' provision of information on uncertainty and risk and by facilitating their consensual decision making.