A multicriteria Decision Support System for Competence-Driven Project Portfolio Selection

The systematic and proactive development of human resources is of major importance in organizations that rely heavily on the competencies of their employees when engaging in innovative endeavors. Human capital, however, is not only a resource required for conducting research, but also the eventual result of that research. When selecting a research portfolio, the decision-maker thus needs to take into consideration both current and future competence requirements, as well as other financial and non-financial objectives and constraints. We introduce a proper multicriteria decision support system (MCDSS) that first determines the set of Pareto-efficient solutions and then allows the decision-maker to interactively filter and/or explore this set in various ways. Its practical application is demonstrated by means of a showcase at the Electronic Commerce Competence Center (EC3) in Vienna, Austria.