Limitations of AHP as Applied to Requirements Prioritization

This paper discusses the extent of the use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), one of the multi-criteria decision-making methods, which has certain limitations in prioritizing the requirements, and the use of some simple techniques such as Brainstorming for obtaining relevant information that helps in the process of prioritization. It is concluded that AHP cannot be satisfactorily applied to requirements priority for the simple reason that human views cannot be quantified. It is also concluded that the methods like AHP cannot be of as much use in requirements prioritization as other simple techniques such as Interviewing, Brainstorming etc. The final conclusion is that the best practical method of prioritizing requirements can be only the using of the domain knowledge of the team of the developers after they have had different rounds of discussions with the clients that require the software. Inspite of its limitations, AHP can be used to obtain some ideas about prioritization which can be perfected only by other practical techniques as mentioned in the paper.