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Trade-off analysis for requirements selection

Ruhe, Günther ; Eberlein, Armin and Pfahl, Dietmar LU (2003) In International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 13(4). p.345-366
Abstract
Evaluation, prioritization and selection of candidate requirements are of tremendous importance and impact for subsequent software development. Effort, time as well as quality constraints have to be taken into account. Typically, different stakeholders have conflicting priorities and the requirements of all these stakeholders have to be balanced in an appropriate way to ensure maximum value of the final set of requirements. Tradeoff analysis is needed to proactively explore the impact of certain decisions in terms of all the criteria and constraints. The proposed method called Quantitative WinWin uses an evolutionary approach to provide support for requirements negotiations. The novelty of the presented idea is four-fold. Firstly, it... (More)
Evaluation, prioritization and selection of candidate requirements are of tremendous importance and impact for subsequent software development. Effort, time as well as quality constraints have to be taken into account. Typically, different stakeholders have conflicting priorities and the requirements of all these stakeholders have to be balanced in an appropriate way to ensure maximum value of the final set of requirements. Tradeoff analysis is needed to proactively explore the impact of certain decisions in terms of all the criteria and constraints. The proposed method called Quantitative WinWin uses an evolutionary approach to provide support for requirements negotiations. The novelty of the presented idea is four-fold. Firstly, it iteratively uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for a step-wise analysis with the aim to balance the stakeholders' preferences related to different classes of requirements. Secondly, requirements selection is based on predicting and rebalancing its impact on effort, time and quality. Both prediction and rebalancing uses the simulation model prototype GENSIM. Thirdly, alternative solution sets offered for decision-making are developed incrementally based on thresholds for the degree of importance of requirements and heuristics to find a best fit to constraints. Finally, trade-off analysis is used to determine non-dominated extensions of the maximum value that is achievable under resource and quality constraints. As a main result, quantitative WinWin proposes a small number of possible sets of requirements from which the actual decision-maker can finally select the most appropriate solution. (Less)
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author
; and
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
simulation, analytical hierarchy process (ahp), decision support, resource constraints, trade-off analysis, requirements selection
in
International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering
volume
13
issue
4
pages
345 - 366
publisher
World Scientific Publishing
external identifiers
  • scopus:0141938564
ISSN
0218-1940
DOI
10.1142/S0218194003001378
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
174fc7f6-1425-46a1-8308-7a0199877a22 (old id 1662693)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 09:43:30
date last changed
2022-02-28 17:21:59
@article{174fc7f6-1425-46a1-8308-7a0199877a22,
  abstract     = {{Evaluation, prioritization and selection of candidate requirements are of tremendous importance and impact for subsequent software development. Effort, time as well as quality constraints have to be taken into account. Typically, different stakeholders have conflicting priorities and the requirements of all these stakeholders have to be balanced in an appropriate way to ensure maximum value of the final set of requirements. Tradeoff analysis is needed to proactively explore the impact of certain decisions in terms of all the criteria and constraints. The proposed method called Quantitative WinWin uses an evolutionary approach to provide support for requirements negotiations. The novelty of the presented idea is four-fold. Firstly, it iteratively uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for a step-wise analysis with the aim to balance the stakeholders' preferences related to different classes of requirements. Secondly, requirements selection is based on predicting and rebalancing its impact on effort, time and quality. Both prediction and rebalancing uses the simulation model prototype GENSIM. Thirdly, alternative solution sets offered for decision-making are developed incrementally based on thresholds for the degree of importance of requirements and heuristics to find a best fit to constraints. Finally, trade-off analysis is used to determine non-dominated extensions of the maximum value that is achievable under resource and quality constraints. As a main result, quantitative WinWin proposes a small number of possible sets of requirements from which the actual decision-maker can finally select the most appropriate solution.}},
  author       = {{Ruhe, Günther and Eberlein, Armin and Pfahl, Dietmar}},
  issn         = {{0218-1940}},
  keywords     = {{simulation; analytical hierarchy process (ahp); decision support; resource constraints; trade-off analysis; requirements selection}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{4}},
  pages        = {{345--366}},
  publisher    = {{World Scientific Publishing}},
  series       = {{International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering}},
  title        = {{Trade-off analysis for requirements selection}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218194003001378}},
  doi          = {{10.1142/S0218194003001378}},
  volume       = {{13}},
  year         = {{2003}},
}