Software Requirements Prioritization with the Goal-Oriented Requirement Language

Abstract

Requirements prioritization is an important activity of the software development process. It is performed to rank information systems (IS) requirements in the order in which they will be implemented to maximize the value delivered to customers. A number of methods and techniques have been proposed to help organizations prioritize IS requirements. However, they all suffer from a number of limitations and their implementation are mostly informal. This work aims to design a novel method that automates the requirements prioritization process. The proposed method uses the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) that permits the: (i) modeling of requirements and linking them to the business objectives/goals, and (ii) evaluation of the impact of requirement choices on business objectives/goals. The method attaches contribution and preference values to GRL edges (e.g., contribution links) and GRL nodes (e.g., goals and solutions) to compute the score of IS requirements. The attached values can be based on any set of business and IT factors (e.g., value for the customer, cost of implementation, risk). This paper also presents the principles underlying the proposed IS requirements prioritization method and discusses its possible implementation in practice.