This project will give you an opportunity to further extend your planning project.

Hands-On Experiments with Computer Aided Planning Tools and Self Assessment : This team project will give you some insights into the IT planning and also the overall topic of AI and Expert Systems.

• Design of a Simple Planner. Use your knowledge of IT planning to design a simple computer aided planning tool that can be used by a small company to plan its IT systems (applications, networks, whatever). The idea is to use your AI and Expert systems knowledge to design (not implement) a simple expert system for simple situations. Your deliverable is a game by using PowerPoint or HTML5 (See Attachment below for details).

• Self-Assessment: Some interesting computer aided IT planning tools are becoming commercially available. You need to find and use 3-4 computer aided IT Planning tools that can be used to develop the IT plan that you have developed by hand in Project 1.Try searching for IT planning tools or technology planning tools, enterprise planning tools, etc. You will be given complete access to one computer aided planning tool. You will have to find the others. Compare, contrast and evaluate these tools by building an IT plan that you have developed manually in Project1. Your deliverable is a self-assessment form that will be given to you.

Designing a Simple Expert System for IT Planning

Overview

Your firm wants to develop IT Planning tools that can be used to support and promote the IT planning consulting services. You are responsible for building a tool ("Advisor") that can help a customer plan a network, computing system, business applications, or a security system. Specifically, the company wants you to use your knowledge of IT and AI/Expert Systems to develop only ONE out of the following possible advisors:

- Advisor for recommending the right business application software

- Advisor for recommending the right local area network (wired) for a site

- Advisor for recommending the right wireless network for a site

- Advisor for recommending the right computing platforms for a site

- Any other advisor of interest to you (e.g., an office planner)

The Advisor is an expert system that suggests a plan based on a set of factors (questions). The factors may be the company size, type, applications being supported, physical site plan, etc. Potential users of the Advisor are corporate IT planners trying to build a small company.

You should assume that the users do not know much about technology but know about their business and are literate about general IT principles. Your deliverable is a design that shows:

• A description of the advisor with a list of key inputs and outputs

• One high level flow chart that describes the overall flow of the advisor

• Show the knowledgebase and the AI techniques used (e.g., the rules, fuzzy logic, case based reasoning, etc)