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Software requirement optimization using a fuzzy artificial chemical reaction optimization algorithm

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Abstract

In agile methods, software products are developed in several releases. In each release, a new set of requirements for development is proposed. Due to technical and non-technical problems, it is almost impossible to develop all the proposed requirements in the next release. The select of an optimal subset from among all the proposed requirements has become an important problem for the developer team. The aim of this problem is to select an optimal subset from among the requirements for product development in the next release so that it has the highest satisfaction to the clients and the lowest cost for the manufacturing company. Since this problem faces two conflicting objectives and several constraints, it is placed in the NP-hard problems category. In this paper, we intend to formulate this problem for the first time as a fuzzy multi-objective optimization problem. We intend to use an artificial chemical reaction optimization algorithm to solve this problem. In the implementation stage, we make use of five interactions between requirements as one of the constraints of the problem for the first time. Two randomized fuzzy synthetic datasets are used to do the experiments. The results of the proposed algorithm are evaluated using three criteria of multi-objective problems. The results and diagrams of the proposed algorithm are very reliable and can help the developer team to make a decision.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their insightful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Babol Branch, Islamic Azad University, Babol, Iran

    Hamidreza Alrezaamiri

  2. Department of Mathematics, Qaemshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qaemshahr, Iran

    Ali Ebrahimnejad

  3. Department of Computer Engineering, Sari Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sari, Iran

    Homayun Motameni

Authors
  1. Hamidreza Alrezaamiri
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  2. Ali Ebrahimnejad
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  3. Homayun Motameni
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Correspondence to Ali Ebrahimnejad.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Communicated by V. Loia.

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Alrezaamiri, H., Ebrahimnejad, A. & Motameni, H. Software requirement optimization using a fuzzy artificial chemical reaction optimization algorithm. Soft Comput 23, 9979–9994 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-018-3553-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-018-3553-7

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