Analysis of Stakeholder/Value Dependency Patterns and Process Implications: A Controlled Experiment

Different classes of information system stakeholders depend on different values to be successful. Understanding stakeholders\´ value dependencies is critical for developing software intensive systems. However, there is no universal one-size-fits-all stakeholder/ value metric that can be applied for a given system. This paper presents an analysis of major classes of stakeholders\´ value priorities using the win-win prioritization results from 16 real-client graduate software engineering course projects. Findings from this controlled experiment further verify and extend the hypotheses that "different stakeholders have different value propositions", bridge the value understanding gaps among different stakeholders, beneficial for further reasoning about stakeholders\´ utility functions and for providing process guidance for software projects involving various classes of stakeholders.