An analysis of priority-based decision heuristics for optimizing elicitation efficiency

[Context & motivation] Requirements are often elicited in hierarchies, with more fine-grained requirements being derived from abstract ones. This approach is typically used in business-process-driven requirements engineering (BPRE) where fine-grained system functions are derived from business activities contained in business processes. [Question/problem] Especially in large requirements hierarchies, requirements engineers are faced with the challenge of having to identify the best elicitation order that maximizes business value. This is an essential activity for incremental development projects, where the most valuable functionality should be released as early as possible to achieve the highest return on investment. [Principal ideas/results] We developed and analyzed a set of priority-based decision heuristics in order to support requirements engineers in deciding which requirements should be elaborated next at a certain point during elicitation. [Contribution] We simulated the heuristics on different business-process-based requirements trees and compared them with regard to efficiency measures. We were able to identify significant differences between these heuristics.