Software's Best Kept Secret: 'ilities'

 

Many developers make the mistake of thinking that quality attributes--commonly referred to as nonfunctional requirements, technical requirements or ilities--are somewhat superfluous. Convinced that these nonfunctional requirements are not as critical to the end product as functional requirements, ilities are rarely documented or even understood.

While quality attributes seem rather unnecessary to many developers, the fact is that they are critical to your product--and your business!

As a short-term competitive advantage, it's not hard to understand that when customers are faced with two or more products that offer similar functionality, they will pick the one that performs best, is more reliable or user-friendlier. While this should be a good enough reason to emphasize quality attributes, many of you still need more convincing.

If you've been in this business long enough, I'm sure you've come to realize the importance of protecting your intellectual property. Unfortunately, your competitors seldom have problems getting a hold of your software. Whether they purchase your product, obtain an evaluation copy from your website or download a pirated version, most can get a copy fairly easily, thereby making it almost impossible for you to keep your incremental improvements secret. Worse, once your competitors learn about your latest bells and whistles, they can easily copy …

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