Applying Decision-Making Models in Requirements Engineering.

The process of requirements engineering (RE) of software systems is a complex problem solving activity involving many stakeholders and many decisions. In order to improve the overall performance level of the RE process, it is important to understand the nature of the decisions made in RE activities. This paper provides a description and explanation of RE decisions by using classical decision making models. It studies the elements of organizationoriented macro decisions as well as process-oriented micro decisions in the RE process. It also illustrates how to integrate decision-making models with RE process models. The integration helps in formulating a common vocabulary and model to improve the manageability of the RE process, and hence support the different stakeholders in the decision-making process related to RE. The main decision-makers in the RE process are identified and illustrations are given from a data set which was collected from a group of software developers.

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