Decision support in requirements engineering

Abstract

Decisions are increasingly understood as the crystallization points of the software development process. Despite the abundance of the requirements engineering (RE) processes, little attention has been given to providing appropriate support for making RE decisions. In this chapter we analyze current research related to RE decision making. We study how and when decisions are made in RE and the underlying methodology. Our focus is not to provide solution approaches for particular decision problems in RE, but to discuss strategies for improving research and practice in the RE decision making process. We have performed an extensive analysis of related research. Our findings show the difficulties in RE decision making and the deficits of current research. We position decision support at the appropriate approach to handle incompleteness and uncertainty of information as is mostly the case in RE. Based on this, we propose an agenda for future research. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.