A multi-criteria analysis approach for the evaluation and selection of IS projects - A sustainability perspective

An effective tool for assessing the sustainability performance of information systems (IS) projects in project management is highly desirable. Such a tool, however, is absent from the literature. This paper presents a multi-criteria analysis approach for effectively evaluating the sustainability performance of IS projects in organizations by extending the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The subjective assessments of the decision maker in the IS project evaluation and selection process are represented by linguistic variables approximated by fuzzy numbers. The geometric centre based defuzzification method is used for transforming the weighting fuzzy performance matrix into the crisp performance matrix on which TOPSIS is applied for calculating the overall performance of individual IS project across all the selection criteria and their associated sub-criteria. Such a multi-criteria decision making approach adequately provides organizations with a proactive mechanism for effectively evaluating and selecting IS projects from the sustainability perspective. An example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the proposed approach in evaluating the sustainability performance of IS projects in organizations.