Dear Darius Danesh, Mike Ryan, Alireza Abbasi

I read your article

Using The Analytic Hierarchy Process as a Decision-Making Tool in Project Portfolio Management

My comments

1- In page 1 you say “Choosing the projects that best promote strategic targets”

This assertion is very important, very seldom mentioned, and indeed it is the MCDM purpose Unfortunately, no many methods can prove that this objective is achieved, at least quantitatively.

2- In page 2 “determine the inhibitors”

What are he inhibitors? Do you mean those aspects that inhibit the correct modeling and solution of a problem? It is so, AHP is not precisely the tool to indicate those inhibitors, because it is unable to solve complex scenarios, that involve, among others, precedence between alternatives, inclusion and exclusion, time consideration, binary values, appraisal of compliance of objectives, etc.

3- Page 3 “without exceeding available resources, nor violating business constraints”,

Very important, and how many MCDM methods consider resources?

4 – “PPM functions are proven to enable the mixture of top-down strategic objective with bottom-up strategy progress in a number of different scientific experiments”

In complete agreement. In my opinion this is the only strategy that works, but in reverse, that is: First the bottom-up approach followed by the top-down approach.

5- “Portfolios of complex and interdependent projects are significantly common and there is certainly an identified requirement for advanced methods to recognise and handle the associations between projects”.

Those methods already exist for some time now, and are Linear Programming (LP) and SIMUS

6- “especially throughout the control of project interconnectivities [41], [42] that could be one of the PPM’s shortcomings”.

This is true, but there are methods that can handle those issues

7- “Despite several studies in organisational environment, a reliable environment within which results can be generalised has not yet been provided”

And probably never will, since all projects are different

8- “Usually portfolios with complex independencies and a large number of criteria or alternatives are managed in a hierarchical format and for the same reason a preferred method requires to support”

Not in my opinion, hierarchical format may exist but within a network environment. You need to consider not only vertical relationships but also transversal.

9- “AHP employs hierarchical (or network) system to indicate a decision problem”

Hierarchical or network? AHP works only with hierarchies not with networks, for the latter, Saaty created ANP.

10- Page 4 “Stevens and Fechner”?

In reality Stevens contended Fechner.

I believe you refer to Weber-Fechner Laws, mentioned by Saaty to explain his Fundamental Table.

In my opinion the latter are a bad application of the first, because these laws refer to stimulus and perceived change in the response, which is logarithmic. I think that this cannot be applied to determine the Fundamental Table, because ‘stimulus and ‘intuition’ are two different concepts. I think that it was a Saaty’s assumption to justify his table.

11- ‘The AHP method is one such approach that presents a solution to shape key decisions into hierarchies of targets, in addition to evaluate those to support difficult choices, like selection of project portfolios for an organisation’

I am afraid that I disagree. AHP works with criteria, as any other MCDM method. They are is conditions that alternatives must satisfy. Targets would mean that they must have numerical goals, and in AHP they don’t. For instance, in a criterion like investment, there is a minimum and a minimum value, they are the targets. Or a target could be to get rid of illiteracy in 10 years. This is a target. Where are targets in AHP?

12 – Page 5 “the comparison scores need to be reconsidered.”

Why? Because a software says so?

13- Page 6. Table 1. So, for you these criteria are independent? They are interrelated as such, you cannot use AHP. Saaty said this specifically.

14-Page 7. “AHP can be applied for dealing with decision-making issues in almost any kind of issue”

This is inexact, AHP is unable to deal even with medium complex scenarios, and there are reasons for that.

15- “One of AHP’s biggest criticisms is that the method suffers from the rank-reversal problem. As a consequence of the comparisons of ratings, adding up options towards the end of the practice may result in the finalised ratings to revers”

This is true, but it is unfair for AHP. Practically all methods produce rank reversal. The fact that it was discovered in AHP, does not make this method the only affected

16 – “Moreover, one other criticism is the fact that AHP is not an axiomatic structure and the large number of pairwise reviews of the options could make the application of AHP a lengthy task”

Absolutely true.

17- Page 9 “This study has determined that AHP cannot individually support the strategic decision-making for a complex PPM.”

Absolutely true

18- Page 9 “Other requirements like feedback about the quality prediction or reliability/accuracy of the solution also requires further investigations”

Feedback is an unexplained assumption introduced by Saaty, that does not exist, not in MCDM

I hope these comments can help

Nolberto Munier