Empirically Testing Some Important Factors for Expert Systems Quality

Abstract

Improving expert systems (ES) quality becomes increasingly important as widespread use and company dependency on ES increases. Six major variables (developer skills, user characteristics, expert characteristics, shell quality, user involvement, and management support) were identified and tested in this study. IBM's Corporate Manufacturing Expert Systems Project Center collected information on 69 projects from project managers and end users to enable the study. The results clearly support the hypothesized relationships and suggest the need for ES project managers to pay special attention to these determinants of ES implementation quality. For exploratory purposes, the component items for each of these major variables were correlated with the components of ES quality. Based on the results, several recommendations are proposed for ES project managers to enhance project quality, including: increasing ES developer training to improve their people skills and ability to model, and to use a systems approach in solving business problems; shaping end-user attitudes and expectations regarding ES; improving the selection of domain experts; restricting the acquisition of ES shells based on a proposed set of criteria; and ensuring a proper match of ES development techniques and tools to the business problem at hand.