This paper deals with how to determine which features should be included in the software to be developed. Metaheuristic techniques have been applied to this problem and can help software developers when they face contradictory goals. We show how the knowledge and experience of human experts can be enriched by these techniques, with the idea of obtaining a better requirements selection than that produced by expert judgment alone. This objective is achieved by embedding metaheuristics techniques into a requirements management tool that takes advantage of them during the execution of the development stages of any software development project. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.