A systematic literature review of requirements prioritization criteria

[Context & motivation] Requirements prioritization is typically applied in order to determine which requirements or features should be included in a certain release or implemented first. While most requirements prioritization approaches prescribe a fixed set of prioritization criteria that have to be assessed during the prioritization process, there is often a need for criteria that are customized to the specific project situation. [Question/problem] However, determining customized prioritization criteria is a time-consuming and laborious task. Instead of an in-depth analysis, criteria are often identified by gut feeling, which is error-prone and bears the risk of choosing misleading criteria. [Principal ideas/results] This paper aims at identifying and categorizing prioritization criteria discussed in the vast body of prioritization literature for software development. We describe a systematic literature review and, as a result, present a consolidated prioritization criteria model. [Contribution] Besides a comprehensive overview of prioritization criteria discussed in the literature, this paper introduces a classification schema that allows researchers and practitioners to identify prioritization criteria and related literature in a time-saving manner

Risk-Aware Multi-stakeholder Next Release Planning Using Multi-objective Optimization

[Context and motivation]: Software requirements selection is an essential task in the software development process. It consists of finding the best requirement set for each software release, considering several requirements characteristics, such as precedences and multiple conflicting objectives, such as stakeholders’ perceived value, cost and risk. [Question/Problem]: However, in this scenario, important information about the variability involved in the requirements values estimation are discarded and might expose the company to a risk when selecting a solution. [Principal ideas/results]: We propose a novel approach to the risk-aware multi-objective next release problem and implemented our approach by means of a satisfiability modulo theory solver. We aim at improving the decision quality by reducing the risk associated with the stakeholder dissatisfaction as related to the variability of the value estimation made by these stakeholders. [Contribution]: Results show that Pareto-optimal solutions exist where a major risk reduction can be achieved at the price of a minor penalty in the value-cost trade-off