Requirements Prioritisation and Retrospective Analysis for Release Planning Process Improvement

The quality of a product can be defined by its ability to satisfy the needs and expectations of its customers. Achieving quality is especially difficult in market-driven situations since the product is released on an open market with numerous potential customers and users with various wishes. The quality of the software product is to a large extent determined by the quality of the requirements engineering (RE) and release planning decisions regarding which requirements that are selected for a product. The goal of this thesis is to enhance software product quality and increase the competitive edge of software organisations by improving release planning decision-making. The thesis is based on empirical research, including both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The research contains a qualitative survey of RE challenges in market-driven organisations based on interviews with practitioners. The survey provided increased understanding of RE challenges in the software industry and gave input to the continued research. Amon