Prachi Bhandari et al, International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, Vol.3 Issue.4, April- 2014, pg. 1336-1341 © 2014, IJCSMC All Rights Reserved 1336 Available Online at www.ijcsmc.com International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing A Monthly Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology ISSN 2320–088X IJCSMC, Vol. 3, Issue. 4, April 2014, pg.1336 – 1341 RESEARCH ARTICLE AN EVALUATION OF METHODS TO PRIORITIZE REQUIREMENTS Prachi Bhandari 1 , Rajni Sehgal 2 ¹CSE, AMITY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA, INDIA ²CSE, AMITY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA, INDIA 1 prachibhandari50@gmail.com, 2 rajnisehgal23@gmail.com Abstract — This article describes an evaluation of six different methods for prioritizing software requirements. Based on the quality requirements for a telephony system, the authors individually used all six methods on separate occasions to prioritize the requirements. The methods were then characterized according to a number of criteria from a user's perspective. We found the analytic hierarchy process to be the most promising method, although it may be problematic to scale-up. In an industrial follow-up study we used the analytic hierarchy process to further investigate its applicability. We found that the process is demanding but worth the effort because of its ability to provide reliable results, promote knowledge transfer and create consensus among project members. q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. Keywords— Requirements; engineering; Requirements; prioritising; Experimental evaluation 1. Introduction In commercial software systems development there is an increasing need for methods capable of prioritizing candidate requirements. Reasons for this include that not all requirements can usually be met with available time and resource constraints that the customers to a larger extent are demanding systems with the most bang for the buck, or that requirements must be allocated to different releases. Efficient and trustworthy methods for prioritizing requirements are therefore strongly demanded by practitioners. A promising framework for this purpose is the cost value approach [1]. In using this approach, decision makers are provided with guidelines on how to prioritize the requirements based on their relationships of value to cost of implementation. This paper provides an investigation of six candidate methods for prioritizing requirements: analytic hierarchy process (AHP), hierarchy AHP, spanning tree matrix, bubble sort, binary search tree and priority groups. These methods can either be used as stand-alone utilities or be utilized within the cost value approach. To study these methods, we systematically applied all methods to prioritize 13 well-defined quality requirements on a small telephony system. We then categorized the methods from a user's perspective according to a number of criteria such as ease of use, required completion time and reliability of results. Despite its problems of scaling-up, we found the analytic hierarchy process to be the most promising method for prioritizing requirements. To further verify this conclusion, we used the method in an industrial case-study. The practitioners were highly inspired by the strength of the method and confirmed its industrial applicability.