A Prescriptive Approach to Assign Weights to Customer Needs for System Design

Abstract:

It is a common practice to assign weights to customer needs in Requirements Engineering. However, there are three hidden traps underlying this practice, which may lead to distortion of customer preferences. Aiming to mitigate these traps, a three-step approach based on group decision analysis is proposed. In the 1st step, real customer needs are identified and structured. Then, measurable attributes are identified for each customer need and used as the input parameters to establish a multi-attribute utility function for individuals. In the 3rd step, customer group’s different preferences are derived from individual customer’s preference to determine a final weight for each customer need. The approach is validated through a case study.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 1061-1062)
• Pages: 1201-1207
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.1061-1062.1201
• Online since: December 2014
• Authors: Xin Wei Zhang*, Shu Rong Tong, Ke Qin Wang
• Keywords: Customer Needs, Group Decision Analysis, Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, Weights

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