The effectiveness of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in prioritizing software defects across the software maintenance phase

This study investigates the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a decision support tool to aid software managers in the prioritization of SOftware DefectS (SODS) to the correct severity level. The effectiveness of an AHP SODS (prioritization) model for industry and government is discussed and illustrated by means of a comparison between priorities set by the manager and those set by the model.; Today, software maintenance typically consumes more than half of all software development resources. Effective maintenance management is viewed as an important process in controlling expanding software system costs. One aspect of software maintenance management which may be improved upon is the area of software defect prioritization, which forms the basis for maintenance planning and maintenance budgets.; The effectiveness of an AHP SODS model was evaluated by means of an experimental study. Software managers who were also domain experts provided five technical and managerial criteria and the subjective judgments used in building the AHP SODS model.; Results indicated that AHP SODS model was more accurate in the prioritization of most of the software defects. Minor differences in the prioritization of the lower level P4 software defects exist between the AHP SODS model and manual methods. It was also found that the AHP SODS model required more time to complete a prioritization task. Therefore, a tradeoff between accuracy and effort needs to be assessed by each maintenance organization. In this study, the participants chose the AHP SODS model in the tradeoff.; The idea of using AHP as a tool to support prioritization of software defects represents a new and important area of research It provides "expert" guidance to a software manager resulting in higher prioritization accuracy. This allows for the best return on investment of limited maintenance resources. It also offers a generic template which can be tailored by other organizations across many different phases of system development. Ultimately, it provides a repeatable process allowing an organization to become more mature within the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model.