Preparing Decision Meetings at a Large Organization

Decision meetings may be considered inserted in a cycle of pre-meetings, meetings and post-meetings. The pre-meeting stage is useful for preparing the meeting and can be computer-supported. Aspects of the design of PRIME, a system intended for this purpose, are presented. The preparation of a meeting mainly consists of discussing the agenda beforehand. The discussion is organized in an IBIS-like manner. Using PRIME, people can prepare meetings in an asynchronous distributed way. The system was tested with actual executives and professionals. Results from their evaluation are discussed. These results are encouraging, since according to participants, the system use lets them improve the outcomes of the succeeding meetings.