Abstract:
Throughout the lifecycle of a software system, complex decisions have to be made. One major source of complexity in decision problems is the need to simultaneously consider different, and sometimes conflicting, criteria. When a decision involves multiple criteria, it cannot be made in a purely objective way, but requires subjective judgement to evaluate the trade-offs between criteria. In the field of decision analysis, several methods have been developed to help decision makers to specify their preferences and apply them to a decision problem in a consistent way. In this chapter, we review several methods for multicriteria decision making, in particular additive weighting methods, methods based on aspiration levels, and outranking methods. We present the theoretical background of these methods, their specific ways of evaluating alternatives, and discuss their applicability to decision problems in software engineering. A concluding section discusses issues related to sensitivity analysis and the use of incomplete information.
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Vetschera, R. (2006). Preference-Based Decision Support in Software Engineering. In: Biffl, S., Aurum, A., Boehm, B., Erdogmus, H., Grünbacher, P. (eds) Value-Based Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29263-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29263-2_4
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