IT investment decision making: Usability of a normative model

This article analyzes the usability of a multi-criteria decision analysis based on a real options AHP (ROAHP) method for IT-investment decisions. The study presents ROAHP to Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) and collects their opinions on prerequisites for usability, strengths and weaknesses. To understand these opinions, the opinions are put in an organizational context by profiling their organization’s strategic decision making process. The study concludes that CIO’s recognize the potential and need of ROAHP but that organizations need much investments in data collection and decision models to make this method useful for its purpose, i.e. increasing IT investment decision rationality. ROAHP lacks usability. Furthermore, this study recommends future research focus on the usability rather than the validity of the method.