Release planning with feature trees: Industrial case

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Requirements catalogues for software release planning are often not complete and homogeneous. Current release planning approaches, however, assume such commitment to detail - at least implicitly. [Question/problem] We evaluate how to relax these expectations, while at the same time reducing release planning effort and increasing decision-making flexibility. [Principal ideas/results] Feature trees capture AND, OR, and REQUIRES relationships between requirements. Such requirements structuring can be used to hide incompleteness and to support abstraction. [Contribution] The paper describes how to utilize feature trees for planning the releases of an evolving software solution and evaluates the effects of the approach on effort, decision-making, and trust with an industrial case. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.