A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects

<bold>Context:</bold> Agile software development, particularly Scrum, enables teams to manage evolving requirements by emphasizing face-to-face communication and incremental deliveries. Although effective in addressing functional requirements, agile methods often overlook non-functional...

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Main Authors: Felipe Ramos, Alexandre Costa, Mirko Perkusich, Luiz Silva, Dalton Valadares, Ademar de Sousa Neto, Felipe Cunha, Hyggo Almeida, Angelo Perkusich
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10915619/
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author Felipe Ramos
Alexandre Costa
Mirko Perkusich
Luiz Silva
Dalton Valadares
Ademar de Sousa Neto
Felipe Cunha
Hyggo Almeida
Angelo Perkusich
author_facet Felipe Ramos
Alexandre Costa
Mirko Perkusich
Luiz Silva
Dalton Valadares
Ademar de Sousa Neto
Felipe Cunha
Hyggo Almeida
Angelo Perkusich
author_sort Felipe Ramos
collection DOAJ
description <bold>Context:</bold> Agile software development, particularly Scrum, enables teams to manage evolving requirements by emphasizing face-to-face communication and incremental deliveries. Although effective in addressing functional requirements, agile methods often overlook non-functional requirements during the initial stages of software projects, potentially leading to cost overruns on software and hardware and project failures exceeding 60%. <bold>Objective:</bold> In this article, we introduce a data-driven recommendation system to assist Scrum teams in eliciting NFRs effectively and early in the development lifecycle. <bold>Method:</bold> Our proposed solution applies the k-nearest neighbors algorithm to recommend non-functional requirements by leveraging historical project data structured through a taxonomy of user stories. We evaluated the system through offline experiments under the cross-validation protocol, utilizing datasets from 13 real-world projects. <bold>Results:</bold> Our recommendation system achieved an F-measure of up to 79%, demonstrating its ability to provide accurate and context-aware non-functional requirements suggestions. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> These findings suggest that our solution supports agile teams by automating non-functional requirement elicitation and enhancing decision-making processes, thereby addressing critical gaps in non-functional requirement integration within Scrum-based projects.
format Article
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issn 2169-3536
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publishDate 2025-01-01
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spelling doaj-art-859c0484b23e4fac8f5e5219e698ca122025-08-20T03:01:31ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-0113440004402310.1109/ACCESS.2025.354863110915619A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based ProjectsFelipe Ramos0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0937-811XAlexandre Costa1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2258-5201Mirko Perkusich2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9433-4962Luiz Silva3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5803-2636Dalton Valadares4Ademar de Sousa Neto5https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1651-4159Felipe Cunha6https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6836-7560Hyggo Almeida7Angelo Perkusich8https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7377-1258Intelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, BrazilIntelligent Software Engineering Group (ISE/VIRTUS), Federal University of Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil<bold>Context:</bold> Agile software development, particularly Scrum, enables teams to manage evolving requirements by emphasizing face-to-face communication and incremental deliveries. Although effective in addressing functional requirements, agile methods often overlook non-functional requirements during the initial stages of software projects, potentially leading to cost overruns on software and hardware and project failures exceeding 60%. <bold>Objective:</bold> In this article, we introduce a data-driven recommendation system to assist Scrum teams in eliciting NFRs effectively and early in the development lifecycle. <bold>Method:</bold> Our proposed solution applies the k-nearest neighbors algorithm to recommend non-functional requirements by leveraging historical project data structured through a taxonomy of user stories. We evaluated the system through offline experiments under the cross-validation protocol, utilizing datasets from 13 real-world projects. <bold>Results:</bold> Our recommendation system achieved an F-measure of up to 79%, demonstrating its ability to provide accurate and context-aware non-functional requirements suggestions. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> These findings suggest that our solution supports agile teams by automating non-functional requirement elicitation and enhancing decision-making processes, thereby addressing critical gaps in non-functional requirement integration within Scrum-based projects.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10915619/Agile developmentNFR elicitationdata-driven recommendationscrum frameworkintelligent systems
spellingShingle Felipe Ramos
Alexandre Costa
Mirko Perkusich
Luiz Silva
Dalton Valadares
Ademar de Sousa Neto
Felipe Cunha
Hyggo Almeida
Angelo Perkusich
A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
IEEE Access
Agile development
NFR elicitation
data-driven recommendation
scrum framework
intelligent systems
title A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
title_full A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
title_fullStr A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
title_full_unstemmed A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
title_short A Data-Driven Recommendation System for Enhancing Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation in Scrum-Based Projects
title_sort data driven recommendation system for enhancing non functional requirements elicitation in scrum based projects
topic Agile development
NFR elicitation
data-driven recommendation
scrum framework
intelligent systems
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10915619/
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