Qualitative Decision Explanation for Information Technology Investment

Many business decisions involve issues that are not amenable to quantitative measures andanalysis. One such domain of decisions is large-scale investments in information technology.Traditional capital budgeting methods have not proven effective.In this paper, we present an alternative paradigm for qualitative decision analysis, embodiedin the artificial intelligence program: VOTE. We describe the technology investment domain ingeneral, and how VOTE models goals and agents in this domain. We apply the VOTE modelto a specific decision taken from a. study of a major information technology investment decision