Abstract
This paper elaborates on an alternative Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) -based algorithm, incorporated into the evaluation phase of an empirical process whose purpose is to evaluate and select a best-of-breed Automated Web Engineering Methodology (AWEM) environment. The process is basically comprised of four major phases, namely: characteristics identification, screening of available AWEM environments, evaluation, and selection. The evaluation phase is the most important part of the process. It consists of two major steps: creating an evaluation scheme and conducting the actual evaluation of alternative AWEM environments against weighted characteristics contained in the evaluation scheme. The previous technique used for assigning weights to characteristics was a simplified hierarchical one suffering a number of shortcomings that made it, to some extent, inaccurate for representing the actual weights of ordinal evaluative characteristics. The paper contributes to the current research in web engineering area by proposing a more accurate evaluation algorithm for weighing and rating various characteristics and alternatives that will eventually assist in making a proper final decision. The algorithm, has been fully automated and tested on real cases using the AWEM ESS, which is an evaluation and selection system built specifically for this purpose.