Tactics based approach for integrating non-functional requirements in object-oriented analysis and design

Abstract

Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are rarely treated as "first-class" elements in software development as Functional Requirements (FRs) are. Often NFRs are stated informally and incorporated in the final software as an after-thought. We leverage existing research work for the treatment of NFRs to propose an approach that enables to systematically analyze and design NFRs in parallel with FRs. Our approach premises on the importance of focusing on tactics (the specific mechanisms used to fulfill NFRs) as opposed to focusing on NFRs themselves. The advantages of our approach include filling the gap between NFRs elicitation and NFRs implementation, systematically treating NFRs through grouping of tactics so that tactics in the same group can be addressed uniformly, remedying some shortcomings in existing work (by prioritizing NFRs and analyzing tradeoff among NFRs), and integration of FRs and NFRs by treating them as first-class entities. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.