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On Importance of Non-functional Requirements in Agile Software Projects—A Survey

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Integrating Research and Practice in Software Engineering

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 851))

Abstract

Context. Among many Agile software development practices, over 30 concern Requirements Engineering (RE). However, none of them mentions explicitly non-functional requirements (NFRs). The question arises – how important are NFRs in Agile software projects? Method. We conducted a survey asking Agile software development practitioners how they perceive the importance of having NFRs defined in their projects. Then, we juxtaposed the answers with their opinions on the perceived importance of 31 Agile RE practices. Results. The opinions of 118 respondents from a wide range of countries around the globe allowed us to determine how important it is to define NFRs. Moreover, we showed their importance from the perspective of the ranking of Agile RE practices. We also identified some relationships between the demographic data such as experience and the perceived importance of requirements concerning quality. Conclusions. We found that over 77% of respondents perceive having NFRs defined in Agile software project as at least important, and for 30% it is critical. Also, the perceived importance of NFRs increases with the increase of respondents’ experience.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants of our study for sharing their opinions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Poznan University of Technology, Piotrowo 2, 60-965, Poznań, Poland

    Sylwia Kopczyńska, Mirosław Ochodek & Jerzy Nawrocki

Authors
  1. Sylwia Kopczyńska
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  2. Mirosław Ochodek
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  3. Jerzy Nawrocki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sylwia Kopczyńska .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science, Bialystok University of Technology, Białystok, Poland

    Stan Jarzabek

  2. Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, Łódź, Poland

    Aneta Poniszewska-Marańda

  3. Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Lech Madeyski

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Kopczyńska, S., Ochodek, M., Nawrocki, J. (2020). On Importance of Non-functional Requirements in Agile Software Projects—A Survey. In: Jarzabek, S., Poniszewska-Marańda, A., Madeyski, L. (eds) Integrating Research and Practice in Software Engineering. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 851. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26574-8_11

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