Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets in Large-Scale Software Requirement Prioritization

Abstract

Requirements prioritization (RP) is a crucial process which aims to evaluate candidate software requirements to be implemented in the next release of a software system. RP is often applied iteratively, according to various criteria, by multiple stakeholders, who may have different roles and needs. The problems encountered during the RP of large sets of requirements can be addressed by following a systematic large-scale decision-making (LSDM) process. The aim of this chapter is to propose an LSDM RP process which applies multi-criteria evaluation based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs). IFSs are suitable to consider stakeholders hesitation for criteria importance and requirements ratings. The proposed process is supported by a recommender system which provides suggestions to stakeholders and also guide them to collaboratively reach consensus for the final RP. The proposed process is tested using an illustrative example. The results are promising since they demonstrate that the suggested process can effectively support multiple stakeholders to prioritize large requirements sets.