Exploring software product management decision problems with constraint solving – opportunities for prioritization and release planning
Author
Summary, in English
Decision-making is central to Software Product
Management (SPM) and includes deciding on requirements
priorities and the content of coming releases. Several algorithms
for prioritization and release planning have been
proposed, where humans with or without machine support
enact a series of steps to produce a decision outcome. Instead
of applying some specific algorithm to find an acceptable
solution to a decision problem, we propose to model SPM
decision-making as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP),
where relative and absolute priorities, interdependencies, and
other constraints are expressed as relations among variables
representing entities such as feature priorities, stakeholder
preferences, and resource constraints. The solution space is
then explored with the help of a constraint solver without
humans needing to care about specific algorithms. This paper
discusses advantages and limitations of CSP modeling in
SPM and gives principal examples as a proof-of-concept
of CSP modeling in requirements prioritization and release
planning. A discussion of further research on constraint
solving in SPM is also given.
Management (SPM) and includes deciding on requirements
priorities and the content of coming releases. Several algorithms
for prioritization and release planning have been
proposed, where humans with or without machine support
enact a series of steps to produce a decision outcome. Instead
of applying some specific algorithm to find an acceptable
solution to a decision problem, we propose to model SPM
decision-making as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP),
where relative and absolute priorities, interdependencies, and
other constraints are expressed as relations among variables
representing entities such as feature priorities, stakeholder
preferences, and resource constraints. The solution space is
then explored with the help of a constraint solver without
humans needing to care about specific algorithms. This paper
discusses advantages and limitations of CSP modeling in
SPM and gives principal examples as a proof-of-concept
of CSP modeling in requirements prioritization and release
planning. A discussion of further research on constraint
solving in SPM is also given.
Department/s
Publishing year
2011
Language
English
Pages
47-56
Publication/Series
2011 Fifth International Workshop on Software Product Management (IWSPM)
Full text
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Document type
Conference paper
Publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Topic
- Computer Science
Keywords
- release planning
- requirementsengineering
- software product management
- prioritization
- constraint programming
Conference name
5th International Workshop on Software Product Management
Conference date
2011-08-29 - 2011-09-02
Conference place
19th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference 2011, Trento, Italy
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-1-4577-1147-3
- ISBN: 978-1-4577-1146-6