Optimal selection of operationalizations for non-functional requirements

Abstract

Several long-standing problems in software engineering are concerned with inadequate requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, and management. This deficit is a major cause of project failure and as such several techniques and frameworks have been developed to assist developers in handling requirements. Methods for handling functional requirements have been in existence for many decades, however methods for handling non-functional requirements are a more recent development.The Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) Framework is one such method that models non-functional requirements and associated implementation methods. This paper extends the previous quantitative reasoning extension into a single objective optimisation model. The model aims to selectively choose operationalizations in order to increase the overall satisfaction of non-functional requirements. Additionally, the optimisation model will be able to handle larger and more complicated graphs than the original framework.