THE DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS

It is now ten years since Operational Research, and other groups that support management decision making, seized upon Knowledge-based System s (KBS) as an alternative set of techniques and methods for building s ystems that support, augment or automate decision making. Success, as with most information technologies, has been mixed. This paper briefly reviews where KBS have been successful, and what benefits have been d erived. It notes that interest in KBS has been rekindled by the presen t interest in business process re-engineering. Given the mature state of development tools, most KBS developers are now focusing on methodol ogical and life-cycle issues. The paper reviews progress in understand ing and using development methodologies, validation methods (now gener ally considered as crucial to technical success) and implementation. S ome ideas about where KBS 'fits in' to the array of tools, techniques and methodologies available to the modem analyst and system developer are presented.