Technical considerations in developing a decision support system

This paper focuses on the importance of the design process for decision support projects. The examples cited in it are derived from the experiences of Texas A&M University’s Ranching Systems Group’s ongoing Grazing Land Applications (GLA) development. The GLA application is a product of a co-operative agreement between Texas A&M University and the United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service. This particular development effort is far from a textbook case largely due to the dynamics associated with the interaction of both state and federal bureaucracies and their associated development standards. However, the GLA development environment does provide a sufficient baseline to illustrate many of the principles and methodologies presented in this paper. As such, the reader should be aware that the issues and examples presented in it are more representative of decision support and data inventorying systems and not modelling or simulation applications.