Critical success metrics: evaluation at the business level

If we lack an objective human expert oracle who can assess a system, and if we lack a library of known or desired behavior, how can we assess an expert system? One method for doing so is a critical success metric (CSM). A CSM is an assessment of a running program which reflects the business concerns that prompted the creation of that program. Given Pre-disaster knowledge, a CSM can be used while the expert system is in routine use, without compromising the operation of the system. A general CSM experiment is defined using pre-disaster points which can compare (e.g.) human to expert system performance. Examples of using CSMs are given from the domains of farm management and process control. (C) 1999 Academic Press