Mastering Non-Functional Requirements

Preface

Maintaining software is hard and therefore expensive and IT departments are often under funded. However, if they are in a just do it mode then non-functional requirements are easy to be forgotten. The consequences of leaving these NFRs lead directly to the aforementioned maintenance problems and increased technical debt.

NFRs are necessary to completing the story of the IT application. While you might consider two or three important NFRs (like performance and security), you’ll probably not cover the others extensively enough, or you might miss out on them all together. And if you do allocate time to deal with them, when the project schedule slips, the NFRs may be the first thing to get drop. So, whether you plan for NFRs or not, chances ...