EVOLVING PRIORITIZATION FOR SOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

The quality of a product is commonly defined by its ability to satisfy stakeholder needsand expectations. Therefore, it is important to find, select, and plan the content of asoftware product to maximize the value for internal and external stakeholders. Thisprocess is traditionally referred to as requirements engineering in the software industry,while it is often referred to as product management in industries with a larger marketfocus. As an increasing number of software products are delivered to a market insteadof single customers, the need for product management in software companies isincreasing. As a side effect, the need for mechanisms supporting decisions regarding......
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EVOLVING PRIORITIZATION FOR SOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENTEVOLVING PRIORITIZATION FORSOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Patrik BeranderBlekinge Institute of TechnologyDoctoral Dissertation Series No. 2007:07School of EngineeringEvolving Prioritization for Software Product Management Patrik Berander Blekinge Institute of Technology Doctoral Dissertation Series No 2007:07 ISSN 1653-2090 ISBN 978-91-7295-108-2Evolving Prioritization for Software Product Management Patrik Berander Department of Systems and Software Engineering School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology SWEDEN© 2007 Patrik BeranderDepartment of Systems and Software EngineeringSchool of EngineeringPublisher: Blekinge Institute of TechnologyPrinted by Printfabriken, Karlskrona, Sweden 2007ISBN 978-91-7295-108-2In Memory of Anders Berander iii AbstractThe quality of a product is commonly defined by its ability to satisfy stakeholder needsand expectations. Therefore, it is important to find, select, and plan the content of asoftware product to maximize the value for internal and external stakeholders. Thisprocess is traditionally referred to as requirements engineering in the software industry,while it is often referred to as product management in industries with a larger marketfocus. As an increasing number of software products are delivered to a market insteadof single customers, the need for product management in software companies isincreasing. As a side effect, the need for mechanisms supporting decisions regarding thecontent of software products also increases.While decision-support within requirements engineering and product management is abroad area, requirements prioritization together with release planning and negotiationare considered as some of the most important decision activities. This is particularlytrue because these activities support decisions regarding the content of products, andare hence drivers for quality. At the same time, requirements prioritization is seen as anintegral and important component in both requirements negotiation (with single cus-tomers) and release planning (with markets) in incremental software development. Thismakes requirements prioritization a key component in software engineering decisionsupport, in particular as input to more sophisticated approaches for release planningand negotiation, where decisions about what and when to develop are made.This thesis primarily focuses on evolving the current body of knowledge in relation torelease planning in general and requirements prioritization in particular. The research iscarried out by performing qualitative and quantitative studies in industrial and academicenvironments with an empirical focus. Each of the presented studies has its own focusand scope while together contributing to the research area. Together they answer ques-tions about why and how requirements prioritization should be conducted, as well aswhat aspects should be taken into account when making decisions about the content ofproducts.The primary objective of the thesis is to give guidelines on how to evolve requirementsprioritization to better facilitate decisions regarding the content of software products.This is accomplished by giving suggestions on how to perform research to evolve thearea, by evaluating current approaches and suggest ways on how these can be improved,and by giving directions on how to align and focus future research to be more success-ful in development of decision-support approaches. This means that the thesis solvesproblems with requirements prioritization today, and gives directions and support onhow to evolve the area in a successful way. iii AcknowledgementsFirst of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, ProfessorClaes Wohlin, for giving me the opportunity to conduct research, for being supportive,and for asking all the necessary questions. I really admire your ability of always beingthere, despite your already too busy schedule. Thanks also to my secondary supervisor,Dr. Mikael Svahnberg, for the cooperation and comments on parts of this thesis.Colleagues and friends at Blekinge Institute of Technology also deserve thanks, espe-cially the people in the SERL group and in the BESQ research environment (includingguest researchers). Instead of mention you with names and accidentally leaving some ofyou out, I want you to know that I appreciate all the help and nice memories, and thefact that you all have motivated me to continue th ...