Generating Patterns and Sub-Patterns of Pairwise Comparison Matrices for the Selection of Software Requirements

Software requirements selection is an important activity of software requirements management. Different methods have been developed to select the software requirements using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). In AHP, pairwise comparison matrices (PCM) are used to specify the preferences of the stakeholders. Based on our literature review we identify that in software requirements selection less attention is given to check the consistency of the PCM. The ranking values of the software requirements would be consistent only when the PCM would be consistent. Therefore, to address this issue we proposed a method for the selection of the software requirements by generating the different patterns and sub-patterns of the PCM. In our case study, we have generated the 8 patterns and for each patterns we have generated the 64 sub-patterns. As a result, we have generated 512 sub-patterns of PCM. The applicability of the proposed method is explained with the help of a case study.