Stakeholder-Centric Clustering Methods for Conflict Resolution in the Requirements Engineering Process

• Published in: Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering pp. 183 - 210
• Main Authors: Gambo, Ishaya, Taveter, Kuldar
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Series: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• Subjects: Clustering algorithm; Conflict resolution; Delphi method; Requirements engineering; Software engineering; Stakeholders
• ISBN: 303096647X; 9783030966478
• ISSN: 1865-0929; 1865-0937
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-96648-5_9

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a framework that combines expert-based and clustering methods for resolving conflicts in requirements elicited from stakeholders. The purpose of the framework was to identify and resolve conflicts among expectations by multiple stakeholders that often arise during the requirements elicitation phase. By means of qualitative and quantitative research approaches, face-to-face oral interviews, quantitative surveys, brainstorming sessions, and focus groups, scenarios were generated with stakeholders of a given problem domain. Our approach was implemented within an interactive system that empirically supports the adequacy of our framework with the involvements of experts and other stakeholders of the chosen problem domain. In addition, we presented a dataset of requirements with their weight scales that formed the basis for resolving conflicting views by stakeholders by applying scientific criteria. The framework was validated in a real-life case study. The results demonstrated 85.71% of correctly clustered instances of requirements, based on which the experts agreed that the interactive system was good enough for resolving conflicting subjective views in requirements analysis. The research performed has the two-fold threat to validity, which suggests (i) the need to adequately capture and harmoniously represent the views by different stakeholders in a multicultural and multidisciplinary domain and (ii) the need to validate the framework in other real life case studies in different domains. The research performed has a high potential for reducing software development costs and saving time at the early stage of the development of software products.