Decision-making software

Decision-making software (DMS) is a term integrating decision analysis tools to facilitate a person's decision-making process, which results in a choice of a course of action or a variant among several alternatives. DMS belongs to the class of decision support systems used to structure information, identify and solve problems and make decisions.

Contents

Basic principles

DMS is based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and its varieties such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), analytic network process (ANP — extension of AHP), PROMETHEE, multi-attribute value theory (MAVT), multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), multi-attribute global inference of quality (MAGIQ), potentially all pairwise rankings of all possible alternatives (PAPRIKA).

A decision problem is first decomposed into a hierarchy of more easily comprehended sub-problems, each of which can be analyzed independently. The elements of the hierarchy can relate to any aspect of the decision problem — tangible or intangible, carefully measured or roughly estimated, well- or poorly-understood.

Once a decision tree is built, the decision makers evaluate its various elements using concrete data for the elements or their own judgments about the elements' relative meanings and importance.

In the final step of the process, numerical priorities are calculated for each of the decision alternatives.

Additional features

Besides evaluation of alternatives and finding the best solutions DM-software often features additional tools for effective decision analysis:

DMS comparison table

Software Supported MCDA method(s) Pairwise comparison Time analysis Sensitivity analysis Group evaluation Risk management Web-based version
1000Minds PAPRIKA Yes No Yes Yes No Yes
Analytica No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Criterium DecisionPlus AHP No No Yes No No No
DecideIT MAUT Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Decision Lab Yes No Yes No Yes No
Decision Lens AHP ANP Yes Yes Yes Yes
Expert Choice AHP Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Hiview3 No No Yes Yes No No
Logical Decisions No No Yes No No No
MakeItRational AHP Yes No Yes Yes No Yes
MindDecider AHP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
TreeAge Pro No No Yes No Yes No

See also

References