The challenges of representing transparency as patterns

Patterns are an invaluable tool for capturing and reusing Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) knowledge. Their construction, however, requires one to pay close attention to the semantics of its elements. This paper reports two important insights realized when developing a collection of Transparency patterns; they concern the semantics of the HELP contribution link and of the correlation link between NFR softgoals. The drawbacks of using these interdependency types are discussed and solutions are presented. The discussion is relevant to anyone attempting to develop precise catalogs for capturing NFR knowledge.