Non-Functional Requirements Oriented Software Process Modeling

The qualities of software relate to their synonym of non-functional requirements (NFRs) and mostly depend on the software processes. Based on this viewpoint, collecting process strategies from different software engineering processes and using aspect-oriented modeling, an approach to modeling NFRs-oriented software processes is proposed. The purpose of the approach is to ensure the development or evolution of high quality software through the whole life cycle of the software. First, a knowledge base of process strategies is created to store the activities for ensuring the software qualities. Based on these strategies and using aspect-oriented approach, corresponding aspects are defined to be composed into the base software process models. The need for these aspects is based primarily on the factor that the activities for NFRs and the base process models can be created separately and easily to be composed later. Besides, the conflicts between multi-aspects and between aspects and base models are detected and controlled. Second, a modeling aided tool NPAT (non-functional requirements-oriented processes aided tool) is developed to support the modeling of NFR-oriented software processes. Finally, the theory, the approach and the tool were used in a case study. Through the case study, the theory and the approach are proved to be feasible and the tool is proved to be effective. The NFRs-oriented software process modeling approach can help an organization provide a focus for enhancing software qualities by adding the NFR activities to the software processes.