A Study on the Utilization of Compatibility Metric in the Ahp: Applying to Software Process Assessments

This study intends to extend the applicability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to software process assessments. Recently an AHP approach has been successfully applied to software process assessments especially with regard to boundary problems, ambiguities between two adjacent ratings. Boundary problems may cause a problem in the process of inter-rater agreement for a process attribute rating among assessors. However, the approach assumes that the assessors reach a consensus for priorities of the associated practices. When assessors cannot reach a priority consensus, a more systematic method is required to make a consensus among those assessors having different sets of priorities. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes a consolidating method among conflicting assessors using compatibility metric of the AHP, and shows its application steps.