A Simulation-based Fuzzy Multi-attribute Decision Making for Prioritizing Software Requirements

摘要

It is well known that most of the approaches proposed in recent research to prioritize software requirements have not been widely adopted. These approaches are too complex and time consuming, or inconsistent and difficult to implement. This paper proposes a new approach to prioritize requirements that is practical and easily implementable. Whereas most proposed approaches quantify requirements in precise and crisp parameters, this paper takes in consideration the imprecise nature of requirements by modeling their attributes as fuzzy variables. As such, these variables are integrated into a fuzzy multi-attribute decision making problem in which the requirements represented as attributes are ranked via the expected value operator of a fuzzy variable. The expected values of the attributes in the problem are computed by numerical simulation. This approach is easily extendable to include other attributes and can be easily customized as a decision making tool for software project managers.