Quality requirements checklist

Abstract

On an individual requirement by requirement basis, quality requirements are typically much more important than functional requirements because they most strongly drive the architecture of software-intensive systems. Thus, it is how well the quality requirements are engineered and implemented that tends to determine the success or failure of mission critical systems. Yet, missing or poorly specified quality requirements can all too commonly be identified during effective evaluations of the requirements specifications and the resulting architectures. This column provides a short checklist for use during the engineering and evaluation of quality requirements to help the requirements team develop better quality requirements and to help evaluators of these requirements identify defects in the associated requirements specifications.