RESOURCE: WHITE PAPER

Economics of Nonfunctional Quality of Service Requirements

Nonfunctional “quality of service” requirements are that subset of software product requirements specifying how well the software is expected to perform. Examples include response time, throughput, reliability, and accuracy. Common problems are that this kind of requirement is poorly specified—if even specified at all. We propose that these problems could be reduced by considering this kind of requirement from an economic perspective. This paper starts by defining nonfunctional quality of service requirements and elaborating on the common problem. The remainder of this paper examines nonfunctional quality of service requirements from an economic perspective, both individually and collectively, showing how this perspective can reduce these common problems.