12. The decision-making process of claim 1 , including agents operative to: select a plan of action; monitor associated expectancies associated with the plan; and use the expectancies to refine a decision regarding the situation.
1. An improved decision-making process, comprising the steps of: providing a collaborative, team-oriented computer architecture wherein human and software agents interact through a shared mental model including an experience knowledge base; receiving information regarding a current situation to be analyzed; consulting the experience knowledge base to qualify the received information based upon any similarities to the current situation; presenting the qualified information to a user through one of the agents; interacting with the user to receive assistance in the form of assumptions or expectancies about the situation; providing the refined information and assumptions or expectancies to other agents; utilizing cues in the experience knowledge base to contact one or more external information sources to gather missing, relevant information, if any, in support of the assumptions or expectancies; using the missing, relevant information in conjunction with other collected information to determine whether a decision about the situation is evolving in an anticipated direction; and, if so: informing the user and updating the experience knowledge base to enhance the quality or timeliness of future decisions regarding similar situations.