Prioritisation of software requirements using grey relational analysis

While many efforts have been undertaken to prioritise requirements in software projects, almost none has shown practical methods to do so. Most methods that produce consistent results tend to be complex and consequently difficult to implement. On the other hand, informal methods can save time and are easy to implement, but lack the structure and consistency needed to reliably analyse requirements. This paper introduces a new approach for prioritising software requirements. Because of the imprecise nature of requirement and attribute data, this approach represents the problem as a grey multi-attribute decision problem by relying on grey relational analysis to address this decision problem. In addition, the approach allows decision makers to use an objective or subjective weighting scheme to model the importance of attributes before solving the decision problem. This approach is practical and can be easily implemented as a decision making tool to assist decision makers in prioritising requirements.