An Exploratory Assessment of the Use and Benefits of ESDLC in Practice

The importance of Expert Systems (ES) as a powerful business tool has become widely recognized in industry. That in turn has led to a major increase in ES development activities and has exacerbated the need to manage these activities for more efficient use of development resources. An important component for effectively managing ES development is an Expert System Development Life Cycle (ESDLC). Based on ES development managers’ opinions, this study ascertains the general benefits to be expected from an ESDLC, integrates existing ESDLC models into one expected to be widely accepted in practice, and uses this standard ESDLC to explore what is being done in practice in terms of company specific ESDLC phases/activities and the percentage of time ES developers spend in each phase.