Prioritising information systems projects in higher education

This paper focuses on solving the problem faced by higher education institutions (HEIs) when prioritising information systems (IS) projects. In many instances HEIs face many more potential IS projects than they can cope with. Making good decisions as to which projects should be supported becomes a complex but crucial issue. In practice, managers may resort to simple heuristics or rules of thumb to decide on projects that should be evaluated against competing objectives. In such complex situations structured approaches exist such as multi‐criteria decision making. The case study reported here explores the application of such a technique, simple multi‐attribute rating technique (SMART), to support the IS Department of Leeds University when prioritising IS projects.