---

Project management involves a lot of decision-making processes. From the decision to initiate planning, to the final decision of decommissioning, the diverse participants collaborate in a continuous effort to define and achieve the ever-changing set of multiple objectives of a project. The flow of information required among all participants is enormous, diverse, and detailed, yet dynamic. People often go to great lengths to obtain useful information to make decisions. The clumsy searching process and excessive requirements of users ability with database query languages will affect the usability of systems. Based on the analysis of the project management user model, the authors aimed to build an efficient and practical request-break-down and information-retrieval model. By using this model, the authors hope to help project participants develop a more suitable tool for retrieving the intended information. The authors also analyzed what the project-management software should provide to users through detailed case studies, thus showing the significance of understanding users and their needs.

---

Dr. Haiyan Xie is an Associate Professor of Construction Management, Department of Technology, Illinois State University. She received M.S. in Computer Information and Science Engineering, University of Florida, in 2003; and Ph.D. in Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida, in 2005. Dr. Xie is a Professional Engineer (PE) and CPC.

---