A Specification for Designing Requirement Prioritization Artifacts

The importance of prioritizing requirements stems from the fact that not all requirements can usually be met with available time and resource constraints. Although several papers have been published in this domain, they mainly focus on descriptive research endeavors to suggest different requirement prioritization approaches. Prescriptive research dealing with design science for a systematic and holistic understanding of the prioritization process is still scarce. The gap motivates our research, which aims at arriving at a set of design principles that explains the form and function of software requirement prioritization artifacts. We resort to a non-experimental approach using content analysis to identify and analyze articles on requirement prioritization published up to 2009 in order to arrive at the set of initial design principles. This subsequently is evaluated based on expert feedbacks. We close the paper by indicating our research continuation plans, and highlighting issues for future considerations

Cost and benefit analysis of quality requirements in competitive software product management: a case study on the QUPER model

In market-driven product development, it is important that the software product is released to the market at the right time, and offers higher quality than the competitors. In release planning, the allocation of development effort in investments into product enhancements, functions are competing with quality requirements for limited resources. In addition, it is important to find the right balance between competing quality requirements. In this paper, we present an industrial evaluation of the benefit and cost views in the QUality PERformance (QUPER) model. The results indicate that the model is relevant in the release planning process, and that the combination of the benefit and cost views provides a clear picture of the current market situation

A quality performance model for cost-benefit analysis of non-functional requirements applied to the mobile handset domain

In market-driven requirements engineering for platform-based development of embedded systems such as mobile phones, it is crucial to market success to find the right balance among competing quality aspects (aka nonfunctional requirements). This paper presents a conceptual model that incorporates quality as a dimension in addition to the cost and value dimensions used in prioritisation approaches for functional requirements. The model aims at supporting discussion and decision-making in early requirements engineering related to activities such as roadmapping, release planning and platform scoping. The feasibility and relevance of the model is initially validated through interviews with requirements experts in six cases that represent important areas in the mobile handset domain. The validation suggests that the model is relevant and feasible for this particular domain

Técnicas para la Estimación y Planificación de Proyectos de Software con Ciclos de Vida Incremental y Paradigma Orientado a Objetos

La estimación de costos y esfuerzos sigue siendo una de las tareas más difíciles en la gestión de un proyecto de software. Esta actividad es realizada por el jefe de proyecto, quien es responsable de hacer dichas estimaciones lo más precisas posible. En la actualidad existen técnicas que permiten realizar esta labor aunque, lamentablemente, aún no hay técnicas maduras específicas para enfoques de desarrollo como la orientación a objetos o los sistemas expertos. A ello se suma el problema de la escasa información proporcionada por las técnicas de estimación existentes para su aplicación a ciclos de vida de desarrollo de software diferentes al de cascada, como, por ejemplo, los ciclos de vida incremental o iterativo. Debido a la problemática existente, se diseñó Tupuy que es un conjunto de técnicas que apoya en la estimación y planificación basada en Puntos de función para proyectos de desarrollo de software orientados a objetos que empleen un modelo de ciclo de vida incremental. Esta propuesta está conformada por tres técnicas: UML2FP, Use Case Precedence Diagram (UCPD) e Incremental-FP. UML2FP es una técnica que permite realizar el cálculo de Puntos de función con modelos orientados a objetos y UCPD apoya en la priorización o definición de la secuencia de construcción considerando la perspectiva o punto de vista del desarrollador en términos de facilidad de construcción. Con los resultados que se obtienen con UML2FP y UCPD, la técnica Incremental-FP, permite definir qué casos de uso se van a construir en cada incremento y estimar el esfuerzo que se requiere para desarrollar cada incremento. La evaluación de UML2FP y UCPD se realizó mediante experimentos controlados con alumnos de pregrado, alumnos de posgrado y profesionales con experiencia en la industria, con resultados alentadores. En el caso de Incremental-FP, la evaluación se realizó mediante proyectos de desarrollo de software con alumnos del cuarto año del programa de pregrado en Ingeniería Informática de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; habiéndose obtenido, generalmente, una diferencia menor al 20% entre el esfuerzo estimado y el esfuerzo real. Adicionalmente, en los experimentos controlados para evaluar UCPD, se pudo determinar que las relaciones propuestas por el Method Adoption Model de Moody sí se pueden confirmar con las muestras obtenidas con profesionales, pero no con alumnos de pregrado; a pesar de que los resultados cuantitativos fueron similares. Esto nos podría sugerir que la evaluación cualitativa de técnicas con alumnos de pregrado deben tomarse con precaución, mas no la cuantitativa. Abstract The estimation of effort and cost is still one of the hardest tasks in software project management. This activity is performed by the project manager who is responsible for making such estimations as accurate as possible. Currently, there are techniques to do this work, but unfortunately there are no specific mature approaches to develop object-oriented software or expert systems. Also, there is limited information provided by the techniques to utilize them in nonwaterfall life cycle models such as incremental or iterative. To address this situation, it was designed Tupuy which is a set of techniques that supports Function Point-based estimation and planning for software development projects that utilize object-oriented and incremental life cycle models. Tupuy consists of three techniques named UML2FP, Use Case Precedence Diagram (UCPD) and Incremental-FP. UML2FP is a technique that allows Function Points counting based on object-oriented models, and UCPD is a technique that addresses the problem of determining the construction sequence or prioritization of a software product from the developer's perspective in terms of ease of construction. With the results obtained through the application of UML2FP and UCPD, Incremental-FP defines which use case has to be constructed in which increment, and estimates the effort required to develop each increment. UML2FP and UCPD evaluation was performed using controlled experiments with undergraduate students, graduate students and practitioners with experience in the industry. The results obtained were satisfactory. The Incremental-FP evaluation was performed with undergraduate students from software development projects of a fourth-year course in Informatics Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In this case, the difference between the estimated effort and actual effort was usually less than 20%. In addition, from the data obtained with the controlled experiments to evaluate UCPD, it was determined that the relationships proposed by the Moody’s Method Adoption Model could be confirmed with practitioners, but not with undergraduate students. These results may suggest that the qualitative assessments of techniques with undergraduate students should be taken with caution, but not the quantitative assesments