Tools: Computers and IT. VB, VBA, Excel, InterDev, Etc. Humans: Multiple ways to make decisions....

Tools:Computers andIT. VB, VBA,

Excel, InterDev,Etc.

Humans:Multiple ways

to makedecisions.

Algorithms:Math/Flow Chart

stuff that helps thetools help the humans

make decisions.

DSS

DSS

Data:Facts pertinentto the decision

at hand.

Distributed and telecommunications-assisted Intelligent Systems.




to makedecisions.

Algorithms:Math/Flow Chart

stuff that helps thetools help the humans

make decisions.

DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.

Algorithms:Math/Flow Chartstuff that helps the

tools help the humansmake decisions.

DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.

Distributed

Centralized




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.




to makedecisions.



DSS


at hand.

PSTN

• “Normal” telecom calls are all “circuit switched”– Dedicated line.

– Comes from voice requirements.

• Contrasts the Internet and Web which is “packet switched”.– Messages can travel many paths.

– Comes from data requirements.

Company A

Company B

Company D

Company C

W1

W9

W12

W10

W2 W11

W6

W7

W8

W3

W4

W5

Internet Backbone

0100111001

1111001011

E-mail from Company Ato Company D:

Company A

Company B

Company D

Company C

W1

W9

W12

W10

W2 W11

W6

W7

W8

W3

W4

W5

Internet Backbone

01001

11001

11110

01011

E-mail from Company Ato Company D:broken into packets, thattravel the best path.

Company A

Company B

Company D

Company C

W1

W9

W12

W10

W2 W11

W6

W7

W8

W3

W4

W5

Internet Backbone

0100111001

1111001011

E-mail from Company Ato Company D:packets reassembled atthe other end.

Of course, TCP/IPis the dominant packetswitching protocol.

PSTN

MTSO

MTSO

“Mobile TelephoneSwitching Office”

OtherBaseStations

“Cells”

Base Stations

MobileUnits

What about wireless?

Telecommunications MediaTelecommunications Media

Multiplexer

MultiplexerGateway

Modem

EarthStation Earth

Station

Coaxialcable

Fiberopticcable

HostComputer

MicrowaveLink

MicrowaveLink

SatelliteRegional

Office

WirelessLAN

SatelliteCentralOffice

End User Workstation

Satellite

The Internet• Network of Networks, established in 1969 by U.

S. Defense Dept. for research.• Number of users doubling each year for most of

middle to late 90s. Now doubles about every two years. “.com” s have taken over.

• No central authority, originally for nuclear disaster reasons. Taxes, gambling, etc.?

• E-mail, Usenet, FTP, telnet: WWW has all of these.

How many Users?• 147 Million as of 9/98, 195 million as of 8/99, 378 million

as of 9/00, 580 million as of 5/02 (www.nua.ie),

– World Total 580.78 million– Africa 6.31 million– Asia/Pacific 167.86 million– Europe 185.83 million– Middle East 5.12 million– Canada & USA 182.67 million– Latin America 32.99 million

How many Servers?

• 3.2 Million as of 9/98, 7 Million as of 8/99, 21 Million as of 9/00, 37 Million as of 7/02 (www.netcraft.com).

“The site www.cob.niu.edu is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000..”

Web Server Market Share

So what? How does this affect Intelligent Systems?

• “Leveraging Knowledge”, “Knowledge Management”, “Groupware”, “GDSS”, “CRM”, etc., are all important buzzwords and concepts of the new millennium.

• The telecommunications revolution is making these concepts possible.

Groupware

• Allows teams and groups to collaborate electronically.– Reduce administrative costs– Increase mobility and portability– Respond to and add value for customers– Support strategic direction– Allows for leveraging of knowledge and barriers to

entry for consulting firms!!

• Lotus Notes the market leader.• Replication allows remote and disconnected usage.

Discussion Snapshot -- Jon Parkinson, E&Y, “The Bigger Need for Groupware”

• "What we need is a family of technologies that support asynchronous collaboration. Because we have people that need to work on related topics who are dispersed in geography obviously, but because of the extremes of the geographic disbursement, they're also disbursed in time. And, if you look at that beyond the United States, you look at the global business, then the simple view of groupware, which is that it allows synchronous collaboration, breaks down, because we can't drag people out of bed at two in the morning to participate in a conference."

Discussion Snapshot -- Mike Blum, C&L, “Passive Versus Active Sharing”

• “Now [with Notes] you basically have a passive mode of sharing versus an active mode of sharing. In the old days you had no way of doing it other than active, meaning you had to broadcast it, you had to send a memo out, you had to send something out. Here, in essence you can build repository and it becomes a passive mode, which is a lot more amenable to people who have so many things to do. In other words, when I feel like it, I'll go in and get the information, but it's not piling up on my desk and I'm forced to look at it.”

Samples of the types and variety of documentation repositories maintained:

1. Client proposals2. Leads and Prospects3. Administrative repositories for - Voice and mail directories - Time reporting - Expense reporting4. White papers5. Presentations6. Project deliverables7. Internal training curriculum and booking8. Lead tracking9. Contact management10. Messaging 11. Regional news12. Methodologies 13. External information sources

Discussion Snapshot -- Rowan Snyder, C&L, “The Hidden Irony”

• “One of the problems with a large enterprise Groupware deployment is that it is a complicated technology. Therefore it puts strong upward pressure on the skills necessary to support it. This translates to direct expense for the training and ongoing costs for more skilled people to support it. The best way to offset these costs is to manage the deployment centrally with fewer people. This can often more than offset new costs, it can reduce total expense. However, this takes expensive tools and engineering of solutions for central management. The irony then is that to be successful in the "ultimate" in end-user computing requires the ultimate in central management. This hidden shift of activities isn't clear when you go in.”

Discussion Snapshot -- Jon Parkinson, E&Y, “Web vs. Notes”

• “You look at what you can do with the WWW, or to be more specific, with Web servers and a client browser, and that has some advantages. First of all it's pretty good at information linking, the structural hyper links that you can put into documents, the ability to link dissimilar things together once you've discovered that you need to, and the ability to run agents over it were very attractive from an Information Management/Knowledge base Management point of view. The fact that the browser has a very low footprint on the client and doesn't require you to store things locally unless you really want to was also an advantage. But that technology is essentially sessional...if you're not connected, then you can't do anything with it.

• Whereas with Notes, there's quite a lot of things you can do when you're not connected. So, although Notes was a relatively expensive answer, it looked like it was also quite useful, when a large percentage of our population is basically mobile."

EDI - “Electronic Data Interchange”: MOTIVATIONS

• Reduce paperwork and improve transaction efficiency

• Improve control of inventories/suppliers

• Strengthen channel control

• Improve customer relations

• Share resources / risks

EDI - Interorganizational networks: ISSUES

• Technical

• Competitive

• Legal and regulatory

• Organizational

Can we do this (EDI) on the ‘Net?

• Normally done through leased lines.

• YES, it can be done on the Net, and at about half the cost or less!!

• What’s this called??? (BIG buzzword/ acronym). $6.3 TRILLION by 2005!!!!!!

• But…

• Security, path tracking, etc.

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)

• Group Support Systems (GSS)• Electronic Meeting Systems• Collaborative Computing

• Evolved as information technology researchers recognized that technology could be developed for supporting meeting activities – Idea generation– Consensus building– Anonymous ranking – Voting, etc.

Two GDSS Schools of Thought

• Social Sciences Approach• Engineering Approach

• Now - Effective Merger

GDSS Definition

• Consists of a set of software, hardware, language components, and procedures that support a group of people engaged in a decision-related meeting (Huber [1984])

• An interactive computer-based system that facilitates the solution of unstructured problems by a group of decision makers (DeSanctis and Gallupe [1987])

• Components of a GDSS include hardware, software, people, and procedures

The Goal of GDSS and Its Technology Levels

• Goal - to improve the productivity and effectiveness of decision-making meetings, either – by speeding up the decision-making process or – by improving the quality of the resulting

decisions

• GDSS attempts to – Increase the benefits of group work (Tables

10.2 and 10.4)– Decrease the losses (Table 10.3)– By providing support to the group members

(center column, Figure 10.1)

GDSS Technology Levels

• Level 1: Process Support• Level 2: Decision-Making

Support• Level 3: Rules of Order

Level 1: Process Support

• Goal - to reduce or remove communication barriers

• Supports– Electronic messaging– Networks (Local)– Public screen– Anonymous input of ideas and votes– Active solicitation of ideas or votes– Summary and display of ideas and opinions

and votes– Agenda format– Continuous display of the agenda, etc.

Level 2: Decision-Making Support

• Adds modeling and decision analysis• Goal - to reduce uncertainty and

noise • Provide task gains• Features

– Planning and financial models– Decision trees– Probability assessment models– Resource allocation models– Social judgment models

Level 3: Rules of Order

• Focus on decision making process

• Controls its timing, content or message patterns

GDSS Technology

• GDSS Technology Options 1.Special-purpose electronic meeting

facility (decision room)2.General purpose computer lab 3.Web (Internet) / Intranet or LAN-based

software for any place / any time

• Components (Figure 10.2)– Hardware– Software– People– Procedures

GDSS Hardware

1. Single PC2. PCs and Keypads3. Decision Room4. Distributed GDSS

GDSS Software

• Modules to support the individual, the group, the process and specific tasks

• Typical Group Features – Numerical / graphical summarization of

ideas, and votes– Programs calculating weights for

alternatives; anonymous idea recording; selection of a group leader; progressive rounds of voting; or elimination of redundant input

– Text and data transmission among the group members, between the group members and the facilitator, and between the members and a central data / document repository.

People

• Group Members • Facilitator (Chauffeur)

• Procedures (that enable ease of operation and effective use of the technology)

The Decision (Electronic Meeting) Room

• 12 to 30 networked personal computers

• Usually recessed • Server PC • Large-screen projection system• Breakout rooms

– Example (Figure 10.3)– See Cool Rooms at

http://www.ventana.com/

• Need a Trained Facilitator for Success

Cool Rooms

Source: Ventana Corp., Tuscon, AZ, http://www.ventana.com

US Air Force

Cool Rooms

IBM Corp.

Source: Ventana Corp., Tuscon, AZ, http://www.ventana.com

Why Few Organizations

Use Decision Rooms– High Cost– Need for a Trained Facilitator– Software Support for Conflict

Issues, NOT Cooperative Tasks– Infrequent Use– Different Place / Different Time

Needs– May Need More Than One

GDSS Software

• Comprehensive GDSS Software– .GroupSystems for Windows (Ventana

Corp.)– .VisionQuest (Collaborative Technologies

Corp.)– .TeamFocus (IBM Corp.)– .SAMM (University of Minnesota)– .Lotus Domino / Notes (Lotus Development

Corp.)– .Netscape Communicator (Netscape

Communications Corp.)

• Emerging Web-Based GDSS– .TCBWorks (The University of Georgia)

Some Critical Success Factors for GDSS

1. Designa) Enhance the structuredness of

unstructured decisionsb) Anonymityc) Organizational involvementd) Ergonomic considerations

2.Implementationa) Extensive and proper user trainingb) Support of top managementc)Qualified facilitator.d) Execute trial runs

3.Managementa) Reliable systemb) Incrementally improve systemc)GDSS staff keeps up with technology

User involvement and participants’ behavior are also important factors

Building Decision Rooms Using Off-the-Shelf Software

Tools: Computers and IT. VB, VBA, Excel, InterDev, Etc. Humans: Multiple ways to make decisions....

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