ions (Fichtelman, 1985).
Early approaches to the development of expert systems often tended to emphasize systems technological concerns, as opposed to user concerns (Stein, 1991). Such systems engineering-oriented approaches often resulted in the development of expert systems that were not well accepted in the fields for which they are designed, or that did not perform at the desired levels of proficiency when they were accepted in their fields.
Recent research has indicated that software engineering program management, generally, is made both more efficient and more effective, when user concerns are incorporated into the developmental process (Eisenstadt & Brayshaw, 1990). User concerns vary from fears of professional devaluation to fears of poor performance, and from conflicting demands to resource allocations. The development of expert systems, therefore, benefit from the effective addressing of user concerns in the developmental process. The thrust of such a contention is not that user concerns should preempt systems engineering concerns in the development of expert systems. Rather, the thrust of such a contention is that the development process for expert systems is improved through the incorporation of user concerns into the process. The problem for expert system developers in this context is the determination of how user concerns should best be incorporated into the developmental process (Barker, 1990).
One example of an expert system is a software program that incorporates expert medical judgment criteria pertaining to a variety of illnesses, permits the user (medical professional) to input specific patient
...