Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach for Selection of Requirements Elicitation Techniques based on the Best-Worst Method

Abstract

During requirements elicitation stage, requirements engineers gather system requirements and drive stakeholders to convey needs and desired software functionality. The elicitation techniques used to acquire software requirements significantly impact the quality of elicited requirements. Several elicitation techniques have been proposed for the Requirement Engineering (RE) process; however, these techniques are rarely used in reality due to a lack of empirical and relative appraisals to assist software team members in deciding on the most appropriate technique. Re-quirement engineers encounter difficulty in deciding the suitable elicitation technique to adopt for a certain software project. This difficulty is due to a lack of knowledge regarding the available elicitation techniques, their efficacy, and how appropriate they are for a certain project. According to the literature, requirements engineering processes benefit from the use of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approaches within particular contexts. An optimal structure is constitutionally presented within the area of the requirements engineering process; hence, the demonstra-tion of a robust decision-making method in the requirements engineering process should motivate a higher level of satisfaction with software projects developed in this way. This study proposes an approach for using the MCDM method in the requirements engineering process. The study contains a model for investigating the selection of an appropriate elicitation technique based on a decision-making method, namely, the Best-Worst Method (BWM). The findings of the proposed model demonstrate the BWM’s power in solving complex decision problems involving several criteria and alternatives.