Generic Formulation of the Requirements Selection Problem

Selecting the appropriate requirements to develop in the next release of a software product is a complex multi-criteria decision process that has been solved by several optimisation approaches. However, there is neither a unified nor a general formulation that could manage the currently agreed properties and relationships between requirements. This paper presents a generic formulation for this problem, which can be tailored to each specific problem, and also allows for its extension in the future. The implementation of six case studies to demonstrate the successful adaptation of the generic formulation is also described.