Eliciting and Analyzing Quality Requirements: Management Influences on Software Quality Requirements

Early in the literature review for the Independent Research and Development Project for Eliciting and Analyzing Quality Requirements, the potential conflict of quality efforts (perceived as time consuming) with organizational management direction (driven by time-to-market and cost considerations) was identified. Quality attributes are influenced by the selection and development of components that make up a system, as well as the development environment in which the system is created. A variety of information sources, including conferences, workshops, pilot projects, and technical assessments, was tapped to identify specific management barriers to the adoption of improved elicitation approaches and appropriate organizational behaviors that facilitated the use of improved mechanisms for the elicitation and analysis of quality requirements. This report documents the ways in which the organizational and project management environment for system development can support or reject improved quality requirements elicitation mechanisms. In addition, this report identifies specific activities as promoting improved quality requirements elicitation when they are embedded into the system development life-cycle structure.