Towards a model for exploring the relationship between managerial decision problems and decision support opportunities

The organisational decision making environment is complex, and decision makers must deal with uncertainty and ambiguity on a continuous basis. Managing and handling decision problems and implementing a solution, requires an understanding of the complexity of the decision domain to the point where the problem and its complexity, as well as the requirements for supporting decision makers, can be described. Research in the Decision Support Systems domain has been extensive over the last thirty years with an emphasis on the development of further technology and better applications on the one hand, and on the other hand, a social approach focusing on understanding what decision making is about and how developers and users should interact. This research project considers a combined approach that endeavours to understand the thinking behind managers’ decision making, as well as their informational and decisional guidance and decision support requirements. This research utilises a cognitive framework, developed in 1985 by Humphreys and Berkeley that juxtaposes the mental processes and ideas of decision problem definition and problem solution that are developed in tandem through cognitive refinement of the problem, based on the analysis and judgement of the decision maker. The framework facilitates the separation of what is essentially a continuous process, into five distinct levels of abstraction of manager’s thinking, and suggests a structure for the underlying cognitive activities. Alter (2004) argues that decision support provides a richer basis than decision support systems, in both practice and research. The constituent literature on decision support, especially in regard to modern high profile systems, including Business Intelligence and Business analytics, can give the impression that all ‘smart’ organisations utilise decision support and data analytics capabilities for all of their key decision making activities. However this empirical investigation indicates a very different reality.

Investigation into a best practice model for providing an integrated user experience with mobile cloud applications

Mobile Cloud Computing promises to overcome the physical limitations of mobile devices by executing demanding mobile applications on cloud infrastructure. In practice, implementing this paradigm is difficult; network disconnection often occurs, bandwidth may be limited, and a large power draw is required from the battery, resulting in a poor user experience. This thesis presents a mobile cloud middleware solution, Context Aware Mobile Cloud Services (CAMCS), which provides cloudbased services to mobile devices, in a disconnected fashion. An integrated user experience is delivered by designing for anticipated network disconnection, and low data transfer requirements. CAMCS achieves this by means of the Cloud Personal Assistant (CPA); each user of CAMCS is assigned their own CPA, which can complete user-assigned tasks, received as descriptions from the mobile device, by using existing cloud services. Service execution is personalised to the user's situation with contextual data, and task execution results are stored with the CPA until the user can connect with his/her mobile device to obtain the results. Requirements for an integrated user experience are outlined, along with the design and implementation of CAMCS. The operation of CAMCS and CPAs with cloud-based services is presented, specifically in terms of service description, discovery, and task execution. The use of contextual awareness to personalise service discovery and service consumption to the user's situation is also presented. Resource management by CAMCS is also studied, and compared with existing solutions. Additional application models that can be provided by CAMCS are also presented. Evaluation is performed with CAMCS deployed on the Amazon EC2 cloud. The resource usage of the CAMCS Client, running on Android-based mobile devices, is also evaluated. A user study with volunteers using CAMCS on their own mobile devices is also presented. Results show that CAMCS meets the requirements outlined for an integrated user experience.