A prescriptive approach to qualify and quantify customer value for value-based requirements engineering

• Published in: International journal of computer integrated manufacturing Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 327 - 345
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xinwei, Auriol, Guillaume, Eres, Hakki, Baron, Claude
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 01.04.2013
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science; Computer Aided Engineering; Computer Science; Embedded Systems; Modeling and Simulation; multi-attribute utility theory; quality function deployment; requirements engineering; Software Engineering; Systems and Control; value model; value-focused thinking
• ISSN: 0951-192X; 1362-3052
• DOI: 10.1080/0951192X.2012.717718

Recently, customer-based product development is becoming a popular paradigm. Customer expectations and needs can be identified and transformed into requirements for product design with the help of various methods and tools. However, in many cases, these models fail to focus on the perceived value that is crucial when customers make the decision of purchasing a product. In this paper, a prescriptive approach to support value-based requirements engineering (RE) is proposed, describing the foundations, procedures and initial applications in the context of RE for commercial aircraft. An integrated set of techniques, such as means-ends analysis, part-whole analysis and multi-attribute utility theory is introduced in order to understand customer values in depth and width. Technically, this enables identifying the implicit value, structuring logically collected statements of customer expectations and performing value modelling and simulation. Additionally, it helps to put in place a system to measure customer satisfaction that is derived from the proposed approach. The approach offers significant potential to develop effective value creation strategies for the development of new products.