Software requirements prioritization plays a crucial role in software development. It can be viewed as the process of ordering requirements by determining which requirements must be done first and which can be done later. Powerful requirements prioritization techniques are of paramount importance to finish the implementation on time and budget. Many factors affect requirement prioritization such as stakeholder expectations, complexity, dependency, scalability, risk and cost. Therefore, finding the proper order of requirements is a challenging process. Hence, different types of requirements prioritization techniques have been developed to support this task. In this survey we propose a novel classification that can classify the prioritization techniques under two major classes: relative and exact prioritization techniques class where each class is divided into two subclasses. We also provide an overview about fifteen different requirements prioritization techniques that are classified under our proposed classification. Moreover, we make a comparison between methods that are related to the same subclass to analyze their strengths and weakness. Based on the comparison results, the properties for each proposed subclass of techniques are identified. Depending on these properties, we present some recommendations to help project managers in the process of selection the most suitable technique to prioritize requirements based on their project characteristics.

Software requirements prioritization plays a crucial role in software development. It can be viewed as the process of ordering requirements by determining which requirements must be done first and which can be done later. Powerful requirements prioritization techniques are of paramount importance to finish the implementation on time and within budget. Many factors affect requirement prioritization such as stakeholder expectations, complexity, dependency, scalability, risk, and cost. Therefore, finding the proper order of requirements is a challenging process. Hence, different types of requirements prioritization techniques have been developed to support this task. In this survey, we propose a novel classification that can classify the prioritization techniques under two major classes: relative and exact prioritization techniques class, where each class is divided into two subclasses. We depend in our classification on the way the value of ranking is given to the requirement, either explicitly as a specific value in the case of the exact prioritization techniques class, or implicitly in the case of the Relative prioritization technique class. An overview of fifteen different requirements prioritization techniques are presented and organized according to the proposed classification criteria's. Moreover, we make a comparison between methods that are related to the same subclass to analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the comparison results, the properties for each proposed subclass of techniques are identified. Depending on these properties, we present some recommendations to help project managers in the process of selecting the most suitable technique to prioritize requirements based on their project characteristics (number of requirements, time, cost, and accuracy).

This study examines whether gender is associated with both the frequency of codeswitching (CS) and the functions that switching performs in Maghreb Arabic (MA)–French–English trilingual peer talk. Gender-focused studies of CS have more often dealt with frequency, structure, attitudes, or identity than with the communicative work of switches in naturally occurring trilingual interaction. The analysis uses three recordings from a larger corpus: one mixed-gender group, one female-only group, and one male-only group. Together, they include eight speakers (four women and four men), 13,785 words, and 745 coded functional instances classified as pragmatic, semantic, linguistic, or sociocultural. The results show that the normalized CS rates are almost the same for women and men (53.14 and 54.93 functional instances per 1000 words). Speaker-level tests and an exploratory chi-square analysis also find no association between gender and the broad functional distribution, chi-square(3, N = 745) = 0.90, p = 0.825, Cramer’s V = 0.035. Sociocultural and pragmatic functions are the most common in both groups, whereas linguistic functions are rare. The study also reveals that no gender differentiation appears in this subset. Because the sample is small, and gender overlaps with recording context, the findings are descriptive and apply only to the recordings examined.