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When-to-release decisions for features with time-dependent value functions

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Abstract

Release planning is of key importance for incremental software product development. With the increasing size and complexity of software products, as well as with the growing demands for transparency and objectivity of decision-making, intuition alone is no longer sufficient for release planning. EVOLVE+ is a systematic method for release planning, which combines the strengths of formalization and computational efficiency with the expertise of the human experts. From a given set of candidate features, the most attractive ones are selected and assigned to a sequence of releases. In this paper, we consider three extensions to the current systematic planning approach EVOLVE+: (a) value functions describing the estimated value of the feature are continuous functions of time, (b) the actual release dates are no longer fixed but can be varied in some pre-defined interval. As a consequence, the available resource capacities are also functions of time. (c) Calculation of trade-off solutions balancing the risk with the potential additional value of early release. All three extensions substantially increase the complexity of the release planning problem. We have developed a solution method using genetic algorithms that is able to accommodate the additional complexity of the advanced model. A hypothetical case study is conducted as a proof-of-concept for the applicability of the method. The applicability of the method is demonstrated by analyzing six detailed planning scenarios.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank both the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) (Discovery Grant 250343-07) and the Alberta Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) for their financial support of this research. In addition, further thanks goes to Jörg Denzinger of the University of Calgary for his help with designing the Or-Tree based genetic algorithm used in this paper. Last, but not least, the detailed comments provided by the reviewers of the paper have been of significant help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Software Engineering Decision Support, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

    Jim Mc Elroy & Guenther Ruhe

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  1. Jim Mc Elroy
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  2. Guenther Ruhe
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Correspondence to Guenther Ruhe.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 Resources and their capacities
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 Case study features and their characteristics
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Mc Elroy, J., Ruhe, G. When-to-release decisions for features with time-dependent value functions. Requirements Eng 15, 337–358 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-010-0097-5

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