The importance of quality requirements in software platform development-a survey

This paper presents a survey where some quality requirements that commonly affect software architecture have been prioritized with respect to cost and lead-time impact when developing software platforms and when using them. Software platforms are the basis for a product-line, i.e. a collection of functionality that a number of products is based on. The survey has been carried out in two large software development organizations using 34 senior participants. The prioritization was carried out using the Incomplete Pairwise Comparison method (IPC). The analysis shows that there are large differences between the importance of the quality requirements studied. The differences between the views of different stakeholders are also analysed and it is found to be less than the difference between the quality requirements. Yet this is identified as a potential source of negative impact on product development cost and lead-time, and rules of thumb for reducing the impact are given.