The analytic hierarchy process in project evaluation

Abstract

A decision to terminate a project can demoralize project managers and team members, and increase concerns about job security. For these reasons, managers tend to delay project termination decisions. However, such delays can put a damper on the normal operation of a company. Therefore, corporations have been seeking to develop a number of methods and techniques to assist with decision making in project evaluation. Benchmarking has gained increasing acceptance as a technique that enhances business processes. This paper is concerned with the development of a model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the evaluation of project termination or continuation, which is based on the benchmarking method. The benchmarking of project evaluation, the operation of AHP, is presented along with a case study. A R&D case study in Taiwan is used to illustrate the approach, the framework of which was entered on an Excel spreadsheet. This approach has provided the decision maker with an alternative for evaluating the status of a project and making the right call.