Non-Functional Requirements – Checklist

Security

  • Login requirements – access levels, CRUD levels
  • Password requirements – length, special characters, expiry, recycling policies
  • Inactivity timeouts – durations, actions

Audit

  • Audited elements – what business elements will be audited?
  • Audited fields – which data fields will be audited?
  • Audit file characteristics – before image, after image, user and time stamp, etc

Performance

  • Response times – application loading, screen open and refresh times, etc
  • Processing times – functions, calculations, imports, exports
  • Query and Reporting times – initial loads and subsequent loads

Capacity

  • Throughput – how many transactions per hour does the system need to be able to handle?
  • Storage – how much data does the system need to be able to store?
  • Year-on-year growth requirements

Availability

  • Hours of operation – when is it available? Consider weekends, holidays, maintenance times, etc
  • Locations of operation – where should it be available from, what are the connection requirements?

Reliability

  • Mean Time Between Failures – What is the acceptable threshold for down-time? e.g. one a year, 4,000 hours
  • Mean Time To Recovery – if broken, how much time is available to get the system back up again?

Integrity

  • Fault trapping (I/O) – how to handle electronic interface failures, etc
  • Bad data trapping – data imports, flag-and-continue or stop the import policies, etc
  • Data integrity – referential integrity in database tables and interfaces • Image compression and decompression standards

Recovery

• Recovery process – how do recoveries work, what is the process?

• Recovery time scales – how quickly should a recovery take to perform?

• Backup frequencies – how often is the transaction data, set-up data, and system (code) backed-up? • Backup generations – what are the requirements for restoring to previous instance(s)?

Compatibility

• Compatibility with shared applications – What other systems does it need to talk to? • Compatibility with 3rd party applications – What other systems does it have to live with amicably? • Compatibility on different operating systems – What does it have to be able to run on? • Compatibility on different platforms – What are the hardware platforms it needs to work on?

Maintainability

• Conformance to architecture standards – What are the standards it needs to conform to or have exclusions from? • Conformance to design standards – What design standards must be adhered to or exclusions created? • Conformance to coding standards – What coding standards must be adhered to or exclusions created?

Usability

• Look and feel standards – screen element density, layout and flow, colours, UI metaphors, keyboard shortcuts • Internationalization / localization requirements – languages, spellings, keyboards, paper sizes, etc

Documentation

• Required documentation items and audiences for each item

http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2009/03/nonfunctional-requirements-minimal-checklist.html

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