Considering Stakeholders’ Feedback in Requirements Prioritization using Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Requirements prioritization plays a significant role to ensure successful planning of software releases. It helps software stakeholders to discover the most desirable requirements. In this paper, we propose requirements prioritization approach using social network analysis based on stakeholders' feedback. The social network models the relationships among stakeholders, their feedback and the system requirements. A string-matching algorithm is used to automate the discovery process of the relationship between stakeholders' feedbacks and requirements specifications based on text similarity. Then, the network is analysed to identify the priority of requirements depending on relevant groups of stakeholders and their feedbacks. As an attempt to validate the results, focus group is conducted to discover the relationship between the stakeholders' feedbacks and the requirements by manually matching each feedback with its related system requirement. Then, social network is built based on the results of the focus group and the system requirements are prioritized based on the network. The results of the two approaches are compared. The experimental results proved that there is a difference between the approach that uses string-matching and the focus group approach. The string-matching approach does not seem to be very appropriate in capturing the real relationship between the stakeholders' feedbacks and the requirements.