Application of the Multistage One-shot Decision-making Approach to an IT Project in the Central Bank of Oman

Abstract

Decision-makers always have to make an appropriate sequence of decisions in a relatively long period, from the start of the project to its completion. Conventional decision-making models under uncertainty are based on expected utility theory and do not sufficiently reflect the one-time nature of decisions. Research has shown that salience (attention-grabbing) information plays a critical role in human decision-making. Furthermore, studies recognized obstacles in applying scientific decision-making methods in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we apply the multistage one-shot decision-making approach (MOSDMA) to a real IT project decision problem from an internal audit department (IAD) in the sultanate of Oman. The proposed approach is a fundamental alternative for multistage decision-making under uncertainty because it is scenario-based instead of lottery-based as in the other existing methods. This study is the first contribution in applying the proposed approach to solving real-world business decision-making under uncertainty problems. The results exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed model in aiding the decision-makers in solving such a one-shot optimal stopping problem in actual practice.