Prioritization of Stakeholder Value Using Metrics

Given the reality of resource constraints. software development always involves prioritization to establish what to implement. Iterative and incremental development methods increase the need to support dynamic prioritization to identify high stakeholder value. In this paper we argue that the current prioritization methods fail to appropriately structure the data for stakeholder value. This problem is often compounded by a failure to handle multiple stakeholder viewpoints. We propose an extension to an existing prioritization method, impact estimation, to move towards better capture of explicit stakeholder value and to cater for multiple stakeholders. A key feature is the use of absolute scale data for stakeholder value. We use a small industry case study to evaluate this new approach. Our findings argue that it provides a better basis for supporting priority decision-making over the implementation choices for requirements and designs.