Value based Incremental Software Development
Tahir Abbas, Ali Ahsan · 2014
In today's competitive world, the investor of software product must rely on shorter development periods where product is developed in small features that result in early market delivery and revenue generation. The selection of specific feature for the current development period has remained a great challenge in the history of software development. The Incremental Funding Method (IFM) [1] is very famous technique that tries to choose the optimum delivery sequence of features, but it uses only one criterion that is Net Present Value. Our proposed methodology tries to evaluate multiple criteria for the selection of particular feature(s) using multi-criteria analysis method called desirability functions. Moreover, IFM methodology is silent about the uncertainty issue in future cash flows while our suggested methodology tries to fill this gap by means of an expert's opinion (A fuzzy based technique). Another very important fact is that almost all cash flows have some interesting patterns/trends. It would be better to preserve these patterns that assist experts to better estimate the future cost estimates rather than starting blindly. A hypothetical case study is formulated in order to validate the extensions made in the IFM methodology.