Extended Influence Diagrams for System Quality Analysis

Making major changes in enterprise information systems, such as large IT-investments, often have a significant impact on business operations. Moreover, when deliberating which IT-changes to make, the consequences of choosing a certain scenario may be difficult to grasp. One way to ascertain the quality of IT investment decisions is through the use of methods from decision theory. This paper proposes the use of one such method to facilitate IT-investment decision making, viz. extended influence diagrams. An extended influence diagram is a tool able to completely describe and analyse a decision situation. The applicability of extended influence diagrams is demonstrated at the end of the paper by using an extended influence diagram in combination with the ISO/IEC 9126 software quality characteristics and metrics as means to assist a decision maker in a decision regarding an IT-investment.