Decision making software

Decision making software (DMS) is a term integrating decision analysis tools to facilitate 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.

Basic principles

DM-software is based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and its varieties: 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), etc.

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.