An Extension of the QUAMOCO Quality Model to Specify and Evaluate Feature-Dependent Non-Functional Requirements

Description

Features in a software system usually must satisfy different quality expectations originating from the various stakeholders of a software system, ranging from direct users to the software manufacturer. As an example, the design quality of the source code will likely be more important if the associated feature is frequently used by customers or if it has strategic value for the software manufacturer. In order to effectively approach these qualitative subtleties, we need a means to specify non-functional requirements on the level of individual software features. Fine-grained specification of non-functional requirements on feature level respects their individual relevance for a feature and facilitates deriving suitable constraints for them. Particularly in DevOps-driven software projects with operational data the fulfillment of non-functional requirements for individual features can then continuously be evaluated. This guides software engineers in meeting these quality expectations on a much finer level than if treated uniformly across the software system. In this paper we present an extension of the QUAMOCO meta quality model for specifying and evaluating non-functional requirements on feature level. While the existing meta model focused on static quality measures, the extension of the meta model now also captures dynamic measures which accumulate during feature execution. An exploratory case study based on the results from an interview study shows the completeness of the approach for specifying and evaluating feature-dependent non-functional requirements.

Period	28 Aug 2019
Event title	2019 45th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)
Event type	Conference
Location	GreeceShow on map