Circuits and Systems, 2016, 7, 1008-1020
Published Online May 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/cs
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/cs.2016.76085
How to cite this paper: Mary, S.A.S.A. and Suganya, G. (2016) Multi-Criteria Decision Making Using ELECTRE. Circuits and
Systems, 7, 1008-1020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/cs.2016.76085
Multi-Criteria Decision Making Using
ELECTRE
S. A. Sahaaya Arul Mary
1
, G. Suganya
2
1
Jayaram College of Engineering and Technology, Thuraiyur, India
2
VIT University, Chennai, India
Received 23 March 2016; accepted 22 May 2016; published 27 May 2016
Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract
Requirements prioritization is one of the key factors in deciding the success of the project and
hence the software industry. One of the major concerns in software prioritization techniques is
that the existing ranking techniques have a very modest support to different criteria used by
stakeholders to present their ranking. The current techniques are not suitable for arriving at an
optimized view of multiple stakeholders using multiple criteria. This research analyzes the issues
in existing techniques. A web based decision support model using ELECTRE as the method for pri-
oritization is proposed. ELECTRE is a multi-criteria decision making model that is proved to be ef-
fective in ranking several decision making problems. The proposed system takes input from mul-
tiple stakeholders using 100-point method. An optimized ranking is obtained using ELECTRE me-
thod. The developed system is validated using a pilot project and is found to be efficient in terms
of saving cost of implementation and man-hours needed for implementation.
Keywords
Requirements Prioritization, ELECTRE, Ranking, Decision Support System
1. Introduction
The quality of a software product delivered to the customer is frequently determined by the ability to satisfy the
needs of the customers and users [1]. Quality can be defined as the degree to which a system, component, or
process meets customer or user’s needs or expectations. Thus the delivered product should be traceable to the
requirements given by the customer. Hence, requirements elicitation is a major step towards the success of any
project. If wrong requirements are implemented and users start resisting using the product, it does not matter
how firm the product is or how thoroughly it has been tested. The entire effort afforded for the development will
go waste.