Managing performance requirements for information systems

Abstract

A major challenge,for injbrmation system development is to deal with performance requirements, an important class ofnonfunctional requirements (quality attributes, or NFRs). For example, a system should "authorise credit card sales quickly." Howevev, pe@rmancerequirements, like other NFRs (such as accuracy and security). are d$icult to handle, since they haveglobal impact on systems, and can co$ict with each other and with target alternatives.This paper overviews a "Performance Requirements Framework " (PeRF). intended to help developers "build performance into " information systems, by producing customised solutions for the particular characteristics of a system, drawing on knowledge of pe@rmance and development. PeRF incorporates an existing goal-oriented and qualitative framework, the "NFR Framework," which oj$ers a sy~ytematic process for treating NFRs. PeRF's catalogues represent and organise knowledge of irzformation systems, their design, implementation andperformance. Catalogues, available in a partial developer's tool, draw on experience in implementing objected-basedsemantic data models, as well as Softiare Perftirmance Engineering (SPE) principles. PeRF was used in empirical studies of injtirmation systems to address a variev ofper-,fi,rmance requirements, domains, characteristics and tradeo$s.

Performance Requirements Identification and Refinement: A Research

“…This is an important activity in requirements analysis [2] particularly in nonfunctional requirements analysis [3]. The related work about performance requirements can be found in [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. In [4] technology based on petri nets, formal logic, and simulation can be used to describe and analyze some important aspects of data processing performance requirements.…”

Examining the Relationships between Performance Requirements and “Not a Problem” Defect Reports

“…For performance requirements, Nixon suggests that both qualitative and quantitative specifications are needed, but different aspects are emphasized at different stages of development [16].…”

Expanding the Criteria for Evaluating Socio-Technical Software

“…2) Criteria Equivalence: Systems engineering often considers criteria like usability or reliability as "quality" requirements, which modify the primary functional goal, but cannot not "stand alone" [65]. For decades, these "-ilities" have stood apart from the main "what the system does" specification.…”