Title: The impacts of non-functional requirements in web system projects

Authors: Norazlin Yusop, Didar Zowghi, David Lowe

Addresses: University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, New South Wales 2007, Australia. ' University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, New South Wales 2007, Australia. ' University of Technology Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, New South Wales 2007, Australia

Abstract: In web system development, the Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are typically considered only briefly during the requirements elicitation stage and not rigorously articulated by either web developers or the client. This paper reports on an investigation into this issue involving interviews with web developers who were engaged in commercial web development projects. The results from this qualitative research highlight that web developers commonly do not pay sufficient attention to NFRs. This arises due to uncertainty, lack of time, lack of knowledge in the importance of NFRs and partly because NFRs are not readily available and documented from previous similar projects. Web developers also do not elicit NFR at the same time and at the same level of details as Functional Requirements (FRs). This study highlights that exploring the domain at an early stage of development will help developers to better understand NFR. A lack of rigour in articulating NFRs may significantly impact on the development effectiveness and the quality of the resulting web system. An evaluation of NFRs may also lead to discovering new FRs.

Keywords: web system projects; non-functional requirements; NFRs; impacts; security; integration; internet; commercial web development; web development projects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVCM.2008.016116

International Journal of Value Chain Management, 2008 Vol.2 No.1, pp.18 - 32

Published online: 06 Dec 2007 *

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