Scalable modeling and analysis of requirements preferences: A qualitative approach using CI-Nets

We present a framework for reasoning with preferences in the context of Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE). Our choice of preference language, conditional importance networks (CI-nets), is motivated by the occurrence in requirements engineering of qualitative preferences and tradeoffs involving sets of items; such preferences are expressed more naturally in CI-nets than in other representations. Building on our past experience with CI-nets, we are improving the scalability and usability of CI-nets for specifying and analyzing requirements preferences. We discuss our ongoing work and long-term plans, including efforts to develop more efficient methods to identify conflicting preferences among possible requirements, guide negotiation of resolutions to such conflicts, and improve traceability and comprehension of requirements preferences.