Visualization issues for software requirements negotiation

Abstract

Negotiating the right balance between conflicting requirements is often a key to the successful software projects. For large projects, requirements negotiation can be especially difficult to do effectively and efficiently when combining input from non-co-located experts and reaching consensus among the different stakeholders (e.g., end-users, developers, software assurance, customers) as well as among the different aspects of software requirements (e.g., functionality, non-functional quality, and infrastructure). Stakeholder perception conflicts about requirements issues should be identified and resolved in early stage of the project life-cycle to achieve a shared vision of the requirements. A technique for effective and efficient requirements conflict identification and resolution is needed. In this paper, we discuss the issues of applying visualization technique to requirements conflict identification and resolution problems with exploration of potential solution approaches. The following visualization issues are discussed: (1) stakeholders' perception representation and consensus measurement, (2) perception visualization, (3) conflict identification, and (4) conflict resolution.