TOWARDS A PRACTICAL METHOD TO VALIDATE DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Validation is important to the decision-making success and to the cont inued use of a Decision Support System (DSS). Without proper validatio n, DSSs may cause costly errors. However, little is known about availa ble effective methods to validate such computer-based systems. In this paper a new method to validate DSS is presented. The approach combine s several validation methods developed to validate Operations Research /Management Science (OR/MS) models and expert systems validation frame works to define a practical guidance for the validation stage of the D SS development. A case study illustrates the effectiveness of the deve loped method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.