Submitted To

Mam Qaisra Ramzan

Presented By
Bushra Iqbal
BSEF19M044
BSSE(regular)

Requirement Prioritization Techniques

REQUIREMENTS
PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES

It is used in Software Product Management for determining which

candidate requirements of a software product should be included in a
certain release.

Requirements are also prioritized to minimize risk during development so

that the most important or high risk requirements are implemented first.
In Software Product Management there
exist several sub processes.
1)First of all there is portfolio management where a product
development strategy is defined based on information from the market and
partner companies.
2)In product road mapping themes and core assets of products in the
portfolio are identified and roadmap constructions are created.
3)In Requirement Management candidate software requirements for a
product are gathered and organized.
4)Finally, in the release planning activity, these requirements are
prioritized and selected for a release, after which the launch of the software
product can be prepared.

Thus, one of the key steps in release planning is requirements

prioritization.
The process of prioritizing requirements provides
support for the following activities
• for stakeholders to decide on the core requirements for the system.
• to plan and select an ordered, optimal set of software requirements for implementation in
successive releases.
• to trade off desired project scope against sometimes conflicting constraints such as
schedule, budget, resources, time to market, and quality.
• to balance the business benefit of each requirement against its cost.
• to balance implications of requirements on the software architecture and future evolution of
the product and its associated cost.
• to select only a subset of the requirements and still produce a system that will satisfy the
customer(s).
• to estimate expected customer satisfaction.
• to get a technical advantage and optimize market opportunity.
• to minimize rework and schedule slippage (plan stability).
FOLLOWING ARE THE REQUIREMENT
PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES

 Bubble Sort Technique

 Hundred Dollar Method

 Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP)

 Five Whys

 Value Oriented Prioritization

All these are discussed below:

BUBBLE SORT TECHNIQUE

To prioritize requirements using bubble sort, you take two requirements and
compare them with each other. If you find out that one requirement should
have greater priority over the other, you swap them accordingly. You then
continue until the very last requirement is properly sorted. The result is a list of
requirements that are ranked.
 HUNDRED DOLLAR METHOD
This simple method is useful anywhere multiple stakeholders need to
democratically vote on which requirements are the most important. All
stakeholders get a conceptual 100 dollars, which they can distribute among the
requirements.
 As such, the stakeholder may choose to give all 100 dollars to a single
requirement, or the person may distribute the points more evenly. The
higher the amount allocated to each requirement, the higher the priority of
the requirement. At the end, the total is counted and the requirements are
sorted based on the number of points received.
 This technique should only be used when you have a small group of
requirements to prioritize With this technique, however, it can be difficult to
keep track of how much has been assigned and what amount is left to
dispose of.
 ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS
This famous requirement prioritization method was designed by Thomas L.
Saaty. The method actually describes an entire framework for making correct
decisions in fields such as business, healthcare, government, and many others.
In essence, stakeholders decompose their goal into smaller sub-problems, which
can easily be comprehended and analyzed (in the form of a hierarchy).
 Once the hierarchy is built, decision-makers evaluate the elements by
comparing pairs to each other.
 The total number of comparisons recommended with AHP are n × (n-
1)/2 (where n is the number of requirements) at each hierarchy level.
Participants make judgements (sometimes based on data) about the relative
importance of each element.
 Numerical values (based on priorities) can then be assigned to each element
of the hierarchy.
 This method is not suitable for a high number of requirements as the number
of requirements determine the number of comparisons that need to be made.
 FIVE WHYS
 It often happens when stakeholders want to implement a certain feature for
reasons that are not founded on logical arguments or the business interests
of the company.
 With five whys, the analyst asks the stakeholder repeatedly (five times or
less) why the requirement is necessary until the importance of the
requirements is established.
 The answers reveal whether the requirement is really necessary or can be
cancelled/postponed once the priority is determined.
 VALUE ORIENTED PRIORITIZATION
VOP uses a framework that gives requirement engineers a foundation for
prioritizing and making decision about requirements. It provides visibility for
all stakeholders during decision making, eliminating lengthy discussions and
arguments over individual requirements by emphasizing the core business
values.
 The first step in setting up a value oriented prioritization process is to
establish a framework for identifying the business’s core values and the
relative relationships among those values.
 VOP uses the relationships that exist between core business values to assess
and prioritize requirements and ensure their traceability.
 The VOP framework establishes a mechanism for quantifying and ordering
requirements for an application increment, a prototype, or a software
requirements specification.
 Company executives identify the core business values and use a simple
ordinal scale to weight them according to their importance to the
organization.