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Software requirements selection is a problem which consists of choosing the set of new requirements which will be included in the next release of a software package. This NP-hard problem is an important issue involving several contradictory objectives which have to be tackled by software companies when developing new releases of software packages. Software projects have to stick to a budget, but they also have to satisfy the highest number of customer requirements. Furthermore, when managing real instances of the problem, the requirements tackled suffer interactions and other restrictions which make the problem even harder. In this paper, a novel multi-objective teaching learning based optimization (TLBO) algorithm has been successfully applied to several instances of the problem. For doing this, the software requirements selection problem has been formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem with two objectives: the total software development cost and the overall customer׳s satisfaction. In addition, three interaction constraints have been also managed. In this context, the original TLBO algorithm has been adapted to solve real instances of the problem generated from data provided by experts. Numerical experiments with case studies on software requirements selection have been carried out in order to prove the effectiveness of the multiobjective proposal. In fact, the obtained results show that the developed algorithm performs better than other relevant algorithms previously published in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an efficient and simple optimization algorithm, particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been widely applied to solve various real optimization problems. However, avoiding premature convergence and balancing the global exploration and local exploitation capabilities of the PSO remains two crucial problems. To overcome these drawbacks of PSO, a hybrid particle swarm optimization with crisscross learning strategy (PSO-CL) algorithm is proposed in this paper. In PSO-CL, in order to well balance the global exploration and local exploitation capabilities of PSO, a search direction adjustment mechanism based on subpopulation division operation is proposed. Meantime, to avoid the premature convergence and enhance the global search ability, a crossover-based comprehensive learning strategy (CCL) is adopted. Additionally, a stochastic example learning strategy (SEL) is introduced, which can assist collective information to be spread among separate sub-swarms, improve the local exploitation ability of the algorithm. 15 classic benchmark functions, CEC2017 test suite and two real-world optimization problems are utilized to verify the promising performance of PSO-CL, experimental results and statistical analysis indicate that PSO-CL has competitive performance compared with state-of-the-art PSO variants. [Display omitted] • A search direction adjustment mechanism based on subpopulation division operation. • A crossover-based comprehensive learning strategy is presented, which can enhance the diversity of swarm. • A stochastic example learning strategy is introduced to further enhance the convergence precise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a bio-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm named Tunicate Swarm Algorithm (TSA). The proposed algorithm imitates jet propulsion and swarm behaviors of tunicates during the navigation and foraging process. The performance of TSA is evaluated on seventy-four benchmark test problems employing sensitivity, convergence and scalability analysis along with ANOVA test. The efficacy of this algorithm is further compared with several well-regarded metaheuristic approaches based on the generated optimal solutions. In addition, we also executed the proposed algorithm on six constrained and one unconstrained engineering design problems to further verify its robustness. The simulation results demonstrate that TSA generates better optimal solutions in comparison to other competitive algorithms and is capable of solving real case studies having unknown search spaces. Note that the source codes of the proposed TSA algorithm are available at [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]