36 Requirements Uncertainty Prioritization Approach : A Novel Approach for Requirements Prioritization

Requirements Prioritization is to ensure the product developed resonates with the expectations of the stakeholders. Requirements prioritization techniques assist in ensuring this where assessments about the priorities of the requirements will be carried out by stakeholders whose judgment is all about their perception of the system which cannot be precise always. Guesses to be made about yet to be built system where only partial knowledge is available. Imprecision shrouded in the forms of uncertainty, incompleteness and vagueness do exist. In order to incorporate these imprecision elements a novel approach for requirements prioritization called Requirements Uncertainty Prioritization Approach (RUPA) is introduced where the basic prioritization technique Numerical Assignment is shaped as Extensive Numerical Assignment by means of probability distribution and grade intervals. The backbone of the approach is Interval Evidential Reasoning Algorithm, used to aggregate the imprecise assessments of stakeholders. A case study is examined to illustrate the usefulness of this approach. KeywordsImprecision, Numerical Assignment, Requirements Prioritization, Uncertainty.