Status of Non-Functional Requirements in Mobile Application Development: An Empirical Study

Non-functional requirements determine the acceptance of the software application amongst its stakeholders apart from the desired functionality yet they are mostly neglected by the software development organizations. Efforts are made to enhance the success rate of the mobile app product; however, there is a lack of empirical studies available for analyzing the contribution of nonfunctional requirements towards the product success. In order to suggest mechanisms for improving product success rates, it is important to undertake the empirical study through surveys and case studies in industrial settings to analyze the software development practices focused on non-functional requirements. The analysis of data collected through empirical methods suggests that non-functional requirements are handled in the rough adhoc fashion and the number of implemented non-functional requirements is less with respect to number of implemented functional requirements. The contribution of non-functional requirements to overall development cost and time is lesser due to lesser number of requirements that undergo implementation but will grow to higher extend as their number will increase. The impact of non-functional requirements on product success rates, failure rates, overall cost and development time varies with type of development, size of organization and complexity of the undertaken mobile app projects.