CSEN406

REQUIREMENT
ENGINEERING
NEGOTIATION, TRIAGE, PRIORITIZATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 NEGOTIATION

02 TRIAGE & PRIORITIZATION

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 2

WHY DO WE
NEED TO
PRIORITIZE OR
NEGOTIATE ON
REQUIREMENTS?
Dr. JOHN ZAKI 3
PRIORITIZE AT EACH LEVEL OF THE REQUIREMENTS

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 4

VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS
Customers, project sponsors, project
management, developers contribute to IMPLEMENTED IN SEQUENCE
prioritization
EX: pay for products the cart. Can’t pay for
something not in the cart but can pay through

PRIORITIZATION CRITERIA a bank transfer for products in cart

Agree on a criteria to prioritize

requirements IMPLEMENTED TOGETHER
EX: credit card accept transactions but
doesn’t handle exceptions of rejected

SAMPLE CRITERIA or stolen cards

Customer value, business value, risk, cost,
implementation difficulty, time to market,
regulatory compliance, competitive advantage,
contractual commitments

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 5

 Every stakeholder is
convinced that his
requirements are the most
important ones.

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 6

NEGOTIATING
CONFLICTS AMONG
01 02 03

STAKEHOLDERS PROJECTS CUSTOMERS & SUPPLIERS

GOALS, FEATURES, AROUND COST, BENEFIT,

REQUIREMENTS RESOURCES RISK, TIME

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 7

Credit: Dr. A. Desoky Lectures & Just Enough requirement management, 2005
Credit: Dr. A. Desoky Lectures & Just Enough requirement management, 2005
Credit: Dr. A. Desoky Lectures & Just Enough requirement management, 2005
PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES
1 2 3

PAIRWISE THREE LEVEL

IN OR OUT
COMPARISON SCALE

4 5 6

VALUE, COST,
MoSCoW 100$
RISK
The simplest of all prioritization methods
make a binary decision: is it in, or is it out?
Keep referring to the project’s business
objectives to make this judgment.
IN OR OUT
Bare minimum needed for the 1 release.
st

Go back to the previously “out”

requirements and go through the process again
for the next release.

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 12

Apply to set of features, user stories, or any other set of
requirements of the same type.

Not practical for more than a couple of dozen

requirements.

Rank ordering of all the requirements by priority is

overkill. You won’t be implementing all of these in PAIRWISE
individual releases.
COMPARISON
Instead, you’ll group them together in batches by &
release or development timebox.
RANK ORDER
Grouping requirements into features, or into small sets
of requirements that have similar priority or that
otherwise must be implemented together, is suffcient.

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 13

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 14
High, medium, and low priority. Not so useful

Two-dimension importance and urgency

THREE LEVEL
SCALE

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 15

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 16
Must: The requirement must be satisfied for
the solution to be considered a success.

Should: The requirement is important and

should be included in the solution if
possible, but it’s not mandatory to
success. MoSCoW
Could: It’s a desirable capability, but one that
could be deferred or eliminated.
Implement it only if time and resources
permit.

Won’t: This indicates a requirement that will

not be implemented at this time but could
be included in a future release.

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 17

Each team gets 100 imaginary dollars.

Use the dollars to “buy” the requirement.

100$
They weight the higher-priority requirements
more heavily by allocating more dollars to them.

100 dollars is all the team get—when they are out

of money, nothing else can be implemented, at
least not in the release they are currently focusing
on.

One approach is to have different participants

PLAY IT
have their own dollar allocations, then add up the
total number of dollars assigned to each
requirement.
MONEY!!
Dr. JOHN ZAKI 18
VALUE, COST, & RISK
Wieger’s Prioritization Matrix

Quality Function Deployment

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 19

ANALYTIC
HIERARCHY
PROCESS
BONUS METHOD

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 20

Useful for complex decisions when multiple
criteria are required for decision making.

Subjective decision like feelings, preference,

satisfaction. RATING DEFINITION

1 Equal IMPORTANCE
Instead of multiple comparison, pairwise
comparison 3 Moderate

The Procedure: 5 Strong

1. Develop pairwise comparison matrix of each
criterion 7 Very Strong

9 Extremely Strong
2. Normalize the matrix

3. Average the value of each row to get Values 2, 4, 8 represent halfway

preferences
corresponding rating

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 21

 Stakeholder
AHP Financial Strategic Risk
Commitment
Stakeholder
1 1/5 1/9 1
Commitment
Financial 5 1 1 5

Strategic 9 1 1 5

Risk 1 1/5 1/5 1

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 22

 Stakeholder
AHP Financial Strategic Risk
Commitment
Stakeholder
1 1/5 1/9 1
Commitment
Financial 5 1 1 5

Strategic 9 1 1 5

Risk 1 1/5 1/5 1

SUM 16 2.4 2.31 12

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 23

 Stakeholder
AHP Financial Strategic Risk
Commitment
Stakeholder
0.06 0.08 0.05 0.08
Commitment
Financial 0.31 0.42 0.43 0.42

Strategic 0.56 0.42 0.43 0.42

Risk 0.06 0.08 0.09 0.08

SUM
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
(normalized)

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 24

 Stakeholder
AHP Financial Strategic Risk EV
Commitment
Stakeholder
0.06 0.08 0.05 0.08 0.07
Commitment
Financial 0.31 0.42 0.43 0.42 0.39

Strategic 0.56 0.42 0.43 0.42 0.46

Risk 0.06 0.08 0.09 0.08 0.08

SUM
1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
(normalized)

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 25

SUMMARY

01 PRIORITIZATION

02 NEGOTIATION

03 PRIORITIZATION TEHCNIQUES

04 BONUS METHOD: AHP

Dr. JOHN ZAKI 26

THANK
YOU
Dr. JOHN ZAKI 27