Using Stakeholder Analysis for Improving Statechart Merging in Software Requirement Management

View-based requirement elicitation provides an effective way to collect information from different stakeholders, who may emphasize distinct aspects of a system. In this paper, we introduce the idea of stakeholder analysis into viewpoint-based requirement analysis and propose a framework for merging state model viewpoints. We give a formal template in which each stakeholder can rank their expected behaviors of the model according to their preference. Our merge operator is behavior preserving and has strong robustness in merging inconsistent requirement. Besides, the operator provides mechanisms to calculate the behaviors´ importance based on stakeholder preference and stakeholder confidence level. A common refinement of the original models tries to maximally meet all stakeholders´ requirements, and the proposed methodology provides good references for making decisions when conflicting behaviors appear between models. It is shown that viewpoints merging in this framework is efficient and reasonable.