A research organization responds to a variety of customer requests. Each high level request is broken down into a set of low level requests. For each low level request, the research organization follows a multi-step process: access, acquire, analyze and report. The customer is given an estimate of whether its request will be met, and if not, why not. The explanation may be provided at multiple levels of granularity including request level (e.g. low level request X cannot be fulfilled) and step level (e.g. the problem lies with acquisition). Available databases contain an incomplete history of past requests as well as information about current staffing and resources. The challenge is to provide an estimate of current capabilities for satisfying requests in general and to estimate the probability for meeting a specific incoming request. er proposes an abstract process model and an aggregation strategy for combining evidence across multiple levels of granularity into estimates that meet ...
Suzanne M. Mahoney