Suitability of requirements prioritization methods for market‐driven software product development
Laura Lehtola, Marjo Kauppinen · Software Process Improvement and Practice · 2006
Abstract In a company producing off‐the‐shelf software for mass markets, the future development steps of the products cannot be negotiated with one or few customers. The decisions concerning the priorities of the requirements must be made within the company, the developer bearing all the financial risks included. This means that finding the right priorities for the requirements is important. However, requirements prioritization is recognized as a difficult activity in software product development. The literature offers methods for requirements prioritization, but many authors report that practices in companies are mostly informal. In this study, we evaluated two requirements prioritization methods in industrial product development projects. In the first case, the users of the system evaluated thepair‐wise comparison techniquefor prioritizing user needs. In the second case, practitioners evaluatedWiegers' methodfor change requests. In addition, we interviewed 11 practitioners from 6 companies about their current requirements prioritization practices and the models that they use as a basis of their prioritization decisions. Our findings indicate that prioritization methods may have limited ability to support decision‐making in a complex area like requirements prioritization in market‐driven product development. In addition, there are practical difficulties in the usage of methods, and therefore, prioritization results should be taken more as being indicative than as an ultimate truth. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.