Tradeoff Analysis for Conflicting Software Non-Functional Requirements

Abstract

The need for particular software non-functional requirements (NFRs) leads a project team to use specific design strategies to fulfill these NFRs. However, some of the strategies may cause deficiencies in other software NFRs. These strategies are called conflicting strategies. Making the tradeoff decision of these conflicting strategies for NFRs is crucial. Therefore, a conflicting NFRs tradeoff framework (CNTF) and the corresponding method are proposed. Firstly, the NFRs are obtained from stakeholders. Fuzzy set theory is used to express stakeholder assessments on the importance of each NFR. The assessment results are ranked using a fuzzy ranking method. Then, adapting from production theory in microeconomics, the degree of satisfaction by which NFRs are affected by conflicting strategies are plotted as tradeoff curves. Borrowing the concept from the linear programming in management science, a tradeoff method is presented to help software project teams make the best tradeoff decision for conflicting NFRs. Finally, feasibility and limitations of the CNTF are elaborated in a case study. INDEX TERMS Non-functional requirement, conflict, production theory, linear programming, tradeoff.

Minimising conflicts among run‐time non‐functional requirements within DevOps

“…In another work, 11 a model has been proposed in order to identify conflicts and dependencies through scenarios and use‐cases. A conflicting NFRs tradeoff framework (CNTF) and the corresponding method are proposed by X. Zhang et al 22 . They have used fuzzy set theory to assess NFRs provided by stakeholders and plots the degree of satisfaction of each conflicting NFR strategies in tradeoff curves.…”

“…Apart from CI/CD activities, the DevOps ecosystem has also made heavy use of continuous monitoring tools -like the ELK stack 1 and Nagios. 22 1 https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/elk-stack/ 2 https://www.nagios.org/documentation/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2023 The Authors.…”

“…work (CNTF) and the corresponding method are proposed by X. Zhang et al22 They have used fuzzy set theory to assess NFRs provided by stakeholders and plots the degree of satisfaction of each conflicting NFR strategies in tradeoff curves. In literature23 , the authors categorize relative conflicts between NFRs in three different categories: detects and resolves conflicts between goal models from different domains, forming a unified goal model.…”

Non-functional requirements elicitation for edge computing

“…NFRs for a system must be unambiguous, measurable, and testable to be effectively leveraged for establishing how well the system satisfies the needs of its stakeholders [25,26,27]. Bass et al [28] described a common structure to specify the NFRs for emphasizing the commonalities between them.…”

The Aircraft and Its Manufacturing System: From Early Requirements to Global Design

“…Out of the context of a product and its production system but still related to the trade-off design choices we are tackling, a method mixes goals, non-functional requirements, scoring with fuzzy rankings by stakeholders [32]. Based on this scoring, in a situation of conflicting goals, the authors introduce measurement of design solution alternative's influence on two goals satisfaction to help designers to make the best trade-off decision.…”