A SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE FOR STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS UTILIZING INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS (STAKEHOLDER, REUSABLE CODE, GROUP DECISION SUPPORT)

A software architecture for strategic-management support-systems is developed, with an underlying principle that new additions to the library of planning tools in such support systems should not have to be new programming efforts.;Selected sets of elemental-engines are assembled into synthesized support drivers which support an even higher level of abstraction, that of the generic logic supporting a family of planning tools. Thus, a family of planning tools may be expanded by the simple creation of text files, containing the dialog of the new tool.;The work looks first at the nature of strategic management decision-making, then to work done in group decision support systems. A framework for software development, particularly in the area of list-processing is presented. A data structure to support such list processing is developed and discussed.;An example of the software architecture is presented via the code for the initial planning-tool developed. This code was then generalized into the library of elemental-engines and a set of synthesized support drivers. This library of planning-tools, built around the architecture is described, and the use of the tools in a planning session is evaluated.;The current status of group decision support is surveyed and the lack of a software architecture for such systems is noted. The software architecture that has been developed is intended to guide the development of such support systems and is based on a library of procedural abstractions called elemental-engines.;Some possible extensions with respect to a decision laboratory are suggested. The laboratory incorporates features developed in the evolution of using computers to support human decision-making, with software written according to the architecture presented.