Supporting quantitative reasoning of non-functional requirements: A process-oriented approach

A long standing problem in software engineering is inadequate requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, validation and management. The lack of well defined requirements is one of the major causes of project failure. Several well-known techniques and frameworks have been developed to deal with the functional aspect of requirements engineering. Recent years have also seen the emergence of frameworks that incorporate non-functional requirements. The Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) Framework models non-functional requirements and associated implementation methods. This paper presents a process-orientated, lightweight, quantitative extension to the NFR Framework; focusing on providing quantitative support to the decision process and how decisions affect the system.