The Treatment of Non-Functional Requirements in MIKE

Non-functional requirements significantly affect and determine the quality of software systems. In this paper it is shown how non-functional requirements are modelled in MIKE, an approach to the development of knowledge-based systems. A semi-formal hypermedia-based model is used to describe the results of the elicitation and interpretation of non-functional requirements and their relationships. Non-functional requirements are the driving force behind the decisions taken in the design phase of MIKE. The impact of non-functional requirements on design decisions and interdependencies between design decisions are explicitly recorded in an additional model in MIKE, thus resulting in a rich documentation of the rationale of design decisions and also providing an important contribution to the traceability of these requirements.