Non-functional requirement

In systems engineering and requirements engineering, a non-functional requirement is a requirement that specifies criteria that can be used to judge the operation of a system, rather than specific behaviors. This should be contrasted with functional requirements that define specific behavior or functions. The plan for implementing functional requirements is detailed in the system design. The plan for implementing non-functional requirements is detailed in the system architecture.

In general, functional requirements define what a system is supposed to do whereas non-functional requirements define how a system is supposed to be. Functional requirements are usually in the form of "system shall do <requirement>", while non-functional requirements are "system shall be <requirement>".

Non-functional requirements are often called qualities of a system. Other terms for non-functional requirements are "constraints", "quality attributes", "quality goals", "quality of service requirements" and "non-behavioral requirements".[1] Qualities, that is non-functional requirements, can be divided into two main categories:

  1. Execution qualities, such as security and usability, which are observable at run time.
  2. Evolution qualities, such as testability, maintainability, extensibility and scalability, which are embodied in the static structure of the software system.[2][3]

Contents

Examples

A system may be required to present the user with a display of the number of records in a database. This is a functional requirement. How up-to-date this number needs to be is a non-functional requirement. If the number needs to be updated in real time, the system architects must ensure that the system is capable of updating the displayed record count within an acceptably short interval of the number of records changing.

Sufficient network bandwidth may also be a non-functional requirement of a system.

Other examples:

See also

References

  1. ^ Stellman, Andrew; Greene, Jennifer (2005). Applied Software Project Management. O'Reilly Media. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-596-00948-9. http://www.stellman-greene.com/aspm/. 
  2. ^ Wiegers, Karl E. (2003). Software Requirements, Second Edition. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1879-8. 
  3. ^ Young, Ralph R. (2001). Effective Requirements Practices. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201709124. 

External links

Scientific links

Templates and examples

Modeling non-functional properties in SOA

Agile non-functional requirements