The NERV methodology: A lightweight process for addressing non-functional requirements in agile software development

Agile software development has become very popular around the world in recent years, with methods such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP). Literature suggests that functionality is the primary focus in Agile processes while non-functional requirements (NFRs) are either ignored or ill-defined. However, for software to be of good quality both functional requirements (FRs) and NFRs need to be taken into consideration; lack of attention to NFRs has been documented to be the cause of failure for many software projects. Hence special attention needs to be focused on NFRs in Agile software development. Requirements elicitation, implementation in design, development, and validation are important activities of software development. Agile has good processes to elicit functional requirements that are captured as user stories. However, NFRs elicitation has not been given enough attention within Agile processes. Additionally, reasoning and validating of NFRs have been lacking. This research proposes the “NERV Methodology: Nonfunctional Requirements Elicitation, Reasoning, and Validation in Agile Processes.” Current results show the artifacts developed in this research can potentially help software development organizations address NFRs in early Agile processes.