Qualitative optimization in software engineering: A short survey

Many software engineering problems involve finding optimal solutions from a set of feasible solutions. Such methods often require stakeholders such as developers and testers to specify preferences over multiple attributes/objectives that are to be optimized. However, in many cases it is more natural for stakeholders to express such preferences in simple, qualitative terms. We survey relevant literature within software engineering for problems in which qualitative optimization techniques can be useful. We also present a model of optimization that relies on the stakeholders qualitative preferences leveraging recent advances in decision theoretic artificial intelligence, which could prove useful and spawn connections between qualitative decision theory and software engineering.