10.7.6 Prioritisation of requirements

Requirement prioritization is used in the Software product management for determining which candidate requirements of a software product should be included in a certain release. Requirements are also prioritized to minimize risk during development so that the most important or high risk requirements are implemented first. Several methods for assessing a prioritization of software requirements exist.

In requirements management candidate software requirements for a product are gathered and organized. Finally, in the release planning activity, these requirements are prioritized and selected for a release, after which the launch of the software product can be prepared. Thus, one of the key steps in release planning is requirements prioritization.

Prioritization of software requirements is a sub process of the release planning process.

The release planning process consists of the sub processes:

1. Prioritize requirements
2. Select requirements
3. Define release requirements
4. Validate release requirements
5. Prepare launch