A Framework for Requirements Prioritisation Process in an Agile Software Development Environment: Empirical Study

User requirements are in high demand due to advancements of technology and business needs. Therefore it is extremely difficult to achieve user requirements at one single time. Agile methods have been introduced to mitigate such issues by implementing user requirements incrementally and iteratively. The top significant aspect in agile development is selecting a group of prominent requirements to be implemented in iteration. This could be derived from continuous requirements prioritisation (RP). To assign which requirements should be selected by practitioners is considered one of the obstacles faced in the process of implementing the inter-iteration period. This study aimed to identify the RP elements and factors that should be considered through the RP process in agile software development. The elements and factors were identified through a review of previous studies and in-depth interviews involving 18 agile practitioners from different software development organizations in different countries (i.e., Malaysia and Jordan), over a period of 2 years. To get the best result, the data is analyzed by using grounded theory techniques (Open, Axial and Selective coding). The elements and factors from the RP process will guide practitioners to an effective RP process that can produce high quality requirements, which are expected to meet the needs of the intended users