Minimising conflicts among run-time non-functional requirements within DevOps

Significant contributions in the existing literature highlight the potential of softgoal interdependency graphs towards analyzing conflicting non-functional requirements (NFRs). However, such analysis is often at a very abstract level and does not quite consider the run-time performance statistics of NFR operationalizations. On the contrary, some initial empirical evaluations demonstrate the importance of the run-time statistics. In this paper, a framework is proposed that uses these statistics and combines the same with NFR priorities for computing the impact of NFR conflicts. The proposed framework is capable of identifying the best possible set of NFR operationalizations that minimizes the impact of conflicting NFRs. A detailed space analysis of the solution framework helps proving the efficiency of the proposed pruning mechanism in terms of better space management. Furthermore, a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) - based system behavioral model that works on top of the proposed framework, is defined and analyzed. An appropriate tool prototype for the framework is implemented as part of this research.