Software Architects’ Experiences of Quality Requirements: What We Know and What We Do Not Know?

[Context/motivation]

Quality requirements (QRs) are a concern of both requirement engineering (RE) specialists and software architects (SAs). However, the majority of empirical studies on QRs take the RE analysts’/clients’ perspectives, and only recently very few included the SAs’ perspective. As a result, (i) relatively little is known about SAs’ involvement in QRs engineering and their coping strategies, and (ii) whatever is known mostly comes from small and midsized projects.

[Question/problem]

The question in this exploratory study is how SAs cope with QRs in the context of large and contract-based software system delivery projects.

[Principal ideas/results]

We executed an exploratory case study with 20 SAs in the context of interest. The key results indicate the role SAs play in QRs engineering, the type of requirements communication processes SAs are involved in, the ways QRs are discovered, documented, quantified, validated and negotiated. Our most important findings are that in contract-based contexts: (1) the QRs are approached with the same due diligence as the functional requirements and the architecture design demand, (2) the SAs act proactively and embrace responsibilities over the QRs, (3) willingness to pay and affordability seem as important QRs prioritization criteria as cost and benefits do, and (4) QRs engineering is perceived as a social activity and not as much as a tool and method centric activity.

[Contribution]

The main contributions of the paper are (i) the explication of the QRs process from SAs’ perspective, and (ii) the comparison of our findings with previously published results.