Defining Utility Functions for Multi-Stakeholder Self-Adaptive Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight method for defining utility functions in self-adaptive systems that effectively incorporates multiple stakeholder priorities and facilitates negotiation and agreement.

Contribution

It presents a novel, practical approach for stakeholders to collaboratively prioritize quality attributes and define utility functions in self-adaptive systems.

Findings

Supports multi-stakeholder prioritization and negotiation

Provides a lightweight, practical utility function definition method

Plans for case study validation

Abstract

[Context and motivation:] For realistic self-adaptive systems, multiple quality attributes need to be considered and traded off against each other. These quality attributes are commonly encoded in a utility function, for instance, a weighted sum of relevant objectives. [Question/problem:] The research agenda for requirements engineering for self-adaptive systems has raised the need for decision-making techniques that consider the trade-offs and priorities of multiple objectives. Human stakeholders need to be engaged in the decision-making process so that the relative importance of each objective can be correctly elicited. [Principal ideas/results:] This research preview paper presents a method that supports multiple stakeholders in prioritizing relevant quality attributes, negotiating priorities to reach an agreement, and giving input to define utility functions for self-adaptive systems. [Contribution:] The proposed method constitutes a lightweight solution for utility function definition. It can be applied by practitioners and researchers who aim to develop self-adaptive systems that meet stakeholders' requirements. We present details of our plan to study the application of our method using a case study.