Quality based prioritization: an approach for prioritizing software requirements

There are several requirements prioritization techniques, but none is considered the best. Most of the techniques have not been widely adopted. Research reveals that most of the techniques suffer from usability and scalability problems. Also, most of the techniques are not quality-based and are not geared at capturing the importance value of quality attributes and incorporating the satisfaction of stakeholders into the process of prioritization of requirements. In this study, a new approach for prioritizing software requirements that is qualitybased and that utilizes Kano theory of quality attributes is proposed. The approach models customer satisfaction using requirements prioritization aspects as contributing variables. Three indexes were used in this study, with Satisfaction Index (SI), Dissatisfaction Index (DI) and Average Satisfaction Coefficient (ASC) (all representing customer satisfaction that results from whether or not requirements are met), as dependent variables and requirements prioritization aspect(s) as independent variable(s). The estimates from the derived models were used to prioritize software requirements. The result showed that the estimates from the three models produced consistent requirements prioritization, implying that any of the models can be used for quality based requirements prioritization