Practitioners and researchers in the field of software engineering have realized that Non Functional requirement have not received due attention and second grade (or no) treatment has been meted out to Non Functional Requirements. Many software products/systems are finally not acceptable because of such an approach. This casual approach of treating NFR has moved on to Testing also. Testing of NFR has never been taken seriously. Here in this work, we attempt to under - stand what needs to be done for proper consideration of NFR, so that they are treated as seriously as the Functional Requirements. In an attempt to treat NFR as seriously as FR we work on the testability of NFR by refining an abstract quality concern into concrete NFR statements. We show that quality concerns needs to be analyzed, for identifying and finally converting them into appropriate and unambiguous NFR. Once a high quality of NFR is ensured then the con se quent testing of these NFRs will become as effective as that of Functional Requirement. We finally propose a revised model of Problem Analysis and Requirement Specification. A step wise refinement model for quality concern into test - able Non Functional Requirement is also proposed.
KeywordsNon Functional Requirements (NFR)TestabilityRequirement AnalysisGoal RefinementScenario Based Testing
L. M. Cysneiros, J. C. S. P. Leite and J. S. M. Neto, “A Framework for Integrating Non-Functional Requirements into Conceptual Models,” Requirements Engineering Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2001, pp. 97-115. doi:10.1007/s007660170008
L. Chung and J. C. S. do Prado, T. Borgida, et al., “On Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering,” Mylopoulos Festschrift, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009, pp. 363-379.
S. Ullah, M. Iqbal and A. M. Khan, “A Survey on Issues in Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation,” 2011 International Conference on Computer Networks and Information Technology (ICCNIT), Islamabad, 11-13 July 2011, pp. 333-340.
P. Singh and A. Tripathi, “Exploring Problems and Solutions in Estimating Testing Effort for Non-Functional Requirement,” International Journal of Computers & Technology, 3 October 2012.
A. Matoussi and R. Laleau, “A Survey of Non-Functional Requirements in Software Development Process,” October 2008 Laboratory of Algorithmics, Complexity and Logic (LACL) University, Paris, 2008.
L. M. Cysneiros and J. C. S. Leite, “Using UML to Reflect Non-Functional Requirements,” Cascon, 2001, p. 2.
L. Chung, B. Nixon, E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos, “Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering,” Boston Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 2000.
L. Chung and B. Nixon, “Dealing with Non-Functional Requirements: Three Experimental Studies of a Process-Oriented Approach,” Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Software Engineering, Seattle, Washington, April 1995, pp. 24-28.
J. Mylopoulos, M. Pistore and P. Traverso, “Model Checking Early Requirements Specifications in Tropos,” Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, IEEE Computer Society, 2001, p. 174.
M. Glinz, “On Non-Functional Requirements,” The 15th IEEE International, 15-19 October, 2007, pp. 21-26.
A. K. Bharadwaj and T. R. Gopalakrishnan-Nair, “Mapping General System Characteristics to Non-Functional Requirements,” IEEE International Advance Computing Conference, Patiala, 6-7 March 2009, pp. 1634-1638.
S. Bode and M. Riebisch, “Tracing the Implementation of Non-Functional Requirements,” IGI Global, Copying or Distributing in Print or Electronic Forms without Written Permission of IGI Global is Prohibited, 2011.
L. Chung and N. Subramanian, “Process-Oriented Metrics for Software Architecture Adaptability, Requirements Engineering, 2001,” Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Symposium, Toronto, 27-31 August 2001, pp. 310-311.
P. Singh and A. K. Tripathi, “Issues in Testing of Software with NFR,” International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2012.
L. Bass and P. Clements, “Software Architecture in Practice,” 2nd Edition, Pearson, London, 2003.
J. Lee and N.-L. Xue, “Analyzing User Requirements by Use Cases: A Goal-Driven Approach,” National Central University, IEEE Software, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1999, pp. 92-101.
C. U. Smith and L. G. Williams, “Software Performance Engineering for Object-Oriented Systems: A Use Case Approach,” 1998, in press.
T. Romania, “Software Testing—State of the Art and Current Research Challenges,” The 5th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics, 28-29 May 2009, pp.
R. S. Pressman, “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach,” 6th Edition, McGraw-Hill Publication, New York, 2005.
S. Desikan and G. Ramesh, “Software Testing :Principles and Practices,” Pearson, London, 2006.
I. Sommerville, “Software Engineering,” 2nd Edition, 2012.
R. Black, “Foundations of Software Testing, Cengage Learning,”
P. Clements, L. Bass, R. Kazman and G. Abowd, “Predicting Software Quality by Architecture-Level Evaluation,” The 5th International Conference on Software Quality, Austin, October 1995.
L. M. Cysneiros and J. C. Sampaio do Prado Leite, “Non-functional Requirements: From Elicitation to Conceptual Models,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 30, No. 5, 2004.
G. J. Myaers, “The Art of Software Testing,” 2nd Edition, John & Willey Inc., 2004.
N. E. Fenton and S. L. Pfleeger, “Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach” 2nd Edition, International Thomson Computer Press, 1997.
IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, 1990.
M. Guessi, L. B. R. Oliveira and E. Y. Nakagawa, “Extensions of UML to Model Aspect-oriented Software Systems, Clei Electronic Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011.
L. Layman, V. R. Basili, M. V. Zelkowitz and K. L. Fisher, “A Case Study of Measuring Process Risk for Early Insights into Software Safety,” The 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering, Waikiki, Hawaii, May 2011, pp. 623-632.
S. Supakkul and L. Chung, “Integrating FRs and NFRs: A Use Case and Goal Driven Approach,” Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Software Engineering Research & Applications, Los Angeles, 5-7 May 2004, pp. 30-37.
E. Kavakli and P. Loucopoulos, “Goal Modelling in Requirements Engineering: Analysis and Critique of Current Methods,” Information Modeling Methods and Methodologies, pp. 102-124. doi:10.4018/978-1-59140-375-3.ch006
S. Greenspan J. Mylopoulos and A. Borgida, “On Formal Requirements Modeling Languages: RML Revisited,” 16th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE-94), Sorrento, 16-21 May 1994.
U. R. N. Tropos, J. Castro, M. Kolp and J. Mylopoulos, “Towards Requirements-Driven Information Systems Engineering: The Tropos Project,” Information Systems, Vol. 27, No. 6, 2002, pp. 365-389. doi:10.1016/S0306-4379(02)00012-1
J. D. Cem Kaner, “An Introduction to Scenario Testing Cem Kaner,” Florida Tech, June 2003.
A. Gregoriades, A. G. Sutcliffe and H. Karanikas, “Evaluation of the SRA Tool Using Data Mining Techniques,” Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2003, Klagenfurt, 16-18 June 2003.
M. R. Barbacci, M. H. Klein, T. Longstaff and C. Weinstock, “Quality Attributes,” Technical Report CMU/SEI-95-TR-021, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, 1995.
X. Franch, P. Botella, X. Burgués and J. M. Ribó, “Putting Non-Functional Requirements into Software Architecture1,” Proceedings of 9th Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Conference (SEKE), Madrid, 18-20 June 1997.
A. Gregoriades, J. E. Shin and A. G. Sutcliffe, “Human-Centred Requirements Engineering,” 12th IEEE Proceedings of the Requirements Engineering Conference, Washington, 6-10 September 2004, pp. 154-163.
R. Mall, “Fundamentals of Software Engineering,” 3rd Edition, PHI Publication, New Delhi.
G. Booch, “UML Modelling book: Unified Modeling Language User Guide,” Addison Wesley, Boston, 1998.
B. Lawrence, K. Wiegers and C. Ebert “The Top Risks of Requirements Engineering,” IEEE Software, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2001, pp. 62-63.
D. Graham, “Requirements and Testing: Seven Missing-Link Myths,” IEEE Software, Vol. 19, No. 5, 2002, pp. 15-17. doi:10.1109/MS.2002.1032845
J. D. Cem Kaner, “The Ongoing Revolution in Software Testing,” Software Test & Performance Conference, 8 December 2004.
B. Pettichord, “Design for Testability,” Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, Portland, 13-14 October 2002.