A classification framework for software requirements prioritization approaches

The task of eliciting requirements has became extremely difficult because stakeholders have different perspectives on an expectation on a system. Besides, the time to obtain the final product is limited. To overcome this situation, a requirements ranking may help in planning releases by indicating which functions are critical and which ones can be added, and in what order, over successive releases. The prioritizing process must hold stakeholder satisfaction considering high-priority requirements first. However, practical experience shows that prioritizing requirements is not as straightforward task as the literature suggests. Considering that, this paper has two goals: the first one is to present a classification framework for software requirements prioritization approaches (emphasizing differences and similarities among eleven selected approaches); and the second one is to show the approaches' weaknesses and to propose possible improvements for future research on this line

Editorial

La Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga UNAB y los miembros del comité editorial de la Revista Colombiana de Computación, tienen el placer de presentar a la comunidad científica esta nueva edición, la cual se constituye en un importante aporte al capital intelectual de Colombia y de la comunidad internacional. Así mismo presentamos un reconocimiento a los autores, evaluadores y personal de apoyo administrativo por su importante aporte

Editorial

La Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga UNAB y los miembros del comité editorial de la Revista Colombiana de Computación, tienen el placer de presentar a la comunidad científica esta nueva edición, la cual se constituye en un importante aporte al capital intelectual de Colombia y de la comunidad internacional. Así mismo presentamos un reconocimiento a los autores, evaluadores y personal de apoyo administrativo por su importante aporte.The Autonomous University of Bucaramanga UNAB and the members of the editorial committee of the Colombian Journal of Computing have the pleasure of presenting this new edition to the scientific community, which constitutes an important contribution to the intellectual capital of Colombia and the international community. . Likewise, we present a recognition to the authors, evaluators and administrative support staff for their important contribution

SRPTackle: A semi-automated requirements prioritisation technique for scalable requirements of software system projects

ContextRequirement prioritisation (RP) is often used to select the most important system requirements as perceived by system stakeholders. RP plays a vital role in ensuring the development of a quality system with defined constraints. However, a closer look at existing RP techniques reveals that these techniques suffer from some key challenges, such as scalability, lack of quantification, insufficient prioritisation of participating stakeholders, overreliance on the participation of professional expertise, lack of automation and excessive time consumption. These key challenges serve as the motivation for the present research.ObjectiveThis study aims to propose a new semiautomated scalable prioritisation technique called ‘SRPTackle’ to address the key challenges.MethodSRPTackle provides a semiautomated process based on a combination of a constructed requirement priority value formulation function using a multi-criteria decision-making method (i.e. weighted sum model), clustering algorithms (K-means and K-means++) and a binary search tree to minimise the need for expert involvement and increase efficiency. The effectiveness of SRPTackle is assessed by conducting seven experiments using a benchmark dataset from a large actual software project.ResultsExperiment results reveal that SRPTackle can obtain 93.0% and 94.65% as minimum and maximum accuracy percentages, respectively. These values are better than those of alternative techniques. The findings also demonstrate the capability of SRPTackle to prioritise large-scale requirements with reduced time consumption and its effectiveness in addressing the key challenges in comparison with other techniques.ConclusionWith the time effectiveness, ability to scale well with numerous requirements, automation and clear implementation guidelines of SRPTackle, project managers can perform RP for large-scale requirements in a proper manner, without necessitating an extensive amount of effort (e.g. tedious manual processes, need for the involvement of experts and time workload)

Requirements Modeling: from Natural Language to Conceptual Models Using Recursive Object Model (ROM) Analysis

Requirements elicitation and modeling are critical for the success of product development not only in software engineering but also in other engineering fields. Collecting the right requirements at each stage and transforming them into conceptual models are essential in delivering a successful product. In most cases, original requirements are represented by natural language in engineering. However, a key challenge faced by industries is to transform existing loosely structured legacy requirements document into the structured representations. This transformation process is extremely time-consuming and prone-to-error. Some efforts in research have been made to develop automatic or semi-automatic processes to bridge natural language and formal representation. Motivated by both the strong industrial need to automatically formalize natural language based requirements (NLR) and the research breakthrough in product requirements modeling, this present thesis proposes a new approach to transforming product requirements from their unrestricted natural language representation to structured conceptual models by using Recursive Object Model (ROM). The proposed approach includes the following three main aspects: 1) developing criteria for the completeness and necessity of design requirements corresponding to certain design stage, 2) developing a dynamic requirements elicitation approach to refine requirements, and 3) developing algorithms for transforming design requirements from natural language to conceptual models, such as Use Case Model by Universal Modeling Language (UML) and Function-Behavior-State (FBS) model. This presented research involves Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, in conjunction with question asking (QA) strategy and conceptual modeling algorithms. The significant tasks include defining the scope of the right requirements, automatically question asking to elicit requirements, formulating the transformation of requirements text into conceptual models, generating the rules for the conceptual modeling, developing algorithms based on the transformation rules, and finally automating the requirements modeling process through software prototypes. The research foundation of this thesis is the Environment Based Design (EBD) methodology which is derived from axiomatic theory of design modeling (ATDM). To bridge the gap between unrestricted natural language and formal conceptual models, an intermediate representation, ROM, is the core for representing the semantics of design requirements throughout the requirements evolution process