IT/IS projects selection using multi-criteria utility theory

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that most decision makers are not only concerned with the financial implications of information technology/system (IT/IS) projects, but they are also concerned with other objectives such as competitive advantage, market share and future growth. Nowadays, multicriteria decision-making methods are gaining importance due to their inherent ability to judge different alternative scenarios for possible selection of the best alternative. This paper provides a decision-making framework for senior executives when selecting innovative IT/IS projects. The proposed framework is based on the multicriteria utility theory (MCUT) combined with information economics principles to select IT/IS project(s) based on ‘business value’ and ‘risk’ criteria. MCUT has the advantage of taking into consideration the decision maker's preferences in the form of utility functions defined over a set of tangible and intangible criteria. To illustrate the application of the proposed framework, a hypothetical case study is provided, where input elicited from four engineering professionals issued to develop utility functions for a predefined set of selection criteria.