Abstract

An effective software development approach must harmonize the need to build the functional behavior of a system with the need to clearly model the associated nonfunctional requirements that affect parts of the system or the system as a whole. Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) aims at providing a systematic support for the identification, separation, representation (through proper modeling and documentation), and composition of crosscutting requirements (both functional and nonfunctional) as well as mechanisms that can make them traceable throughout the software development. In this work, we discuss a sequence of systematic activities towards an early consideration of specifying and separating crosscutting requirements. This approach would make it possible to identify and resolve conflicts between the crosscutting requirements earlier in the development cycle and to promote traceability of broadly scoped requirements throughout system development, maintenance and evolution. In addition, we propose sets of quality measurements to be associated with the AOSD activities in order to assist stakeholders with quantitative evidences on the quality of the modeling decisions throughout the development process, and of the final product.