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Vol.13, No.2, May 2024. ISSN: 2217-8309 eISSN: 2217-8333
TEM Journal
TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION, MANAGEMENT, INFORMATICS Association for Information Communication Technology Education and Science |
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods: A Case of Software Vendor Selection
Anshul Rani, Deepti Mishra, Aida Omerovic
© 2024 Deepti Mishra, published by UIKTEN. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Citation Information: TEM Journal. Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 1218-1229, ISSN 2217-8309, DOI: 10.18421/TEM132-35, May 2024.
Received: 07 December 2023. Revised: 26 February 2024.
Abstract:
Various multi-criteria decision-making methods have been utilized in literature to address vendor selection challenges in various contexts. This study reflects on these decision-making techniques for vendor selection in the software ecosystem during software outsourcing. For the same, firstly, a requirement framework for the decision-making process for software vendor selection is proposed. Afterwards, five selected different multi-criteria decision-making techniques are compared and critically analysed against this requirement framework. This study supports software practitioners and decision-makers by providing information about which decision-making method to choose, considering the trade-off between the benefits and drawbacks of adopting each method or using hybrid approaches by combining two or more techniques with fuzzy logic. It is found that decision-making techniques generally lack in modelling the problem itself and handling the conflicts and uncertainties that may prevail during the decision-making process. Furthermore, it has been identified that artificial neural networks (ANN) and analytic network process (ANP) can support the dependencies between alternatives and criteria while handling complex interactions in the software ecosystem. On the other hand, due to its comparative ease of use, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) can serve better in scenarios where decision-makers are not experienced, or past data to train the ANN or ANP models is unavailable.
Keywords –Software business development, decision-making, software ecosystem, vendor selection, vendor analysis. |
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