Requirements and Scenarios: Running Aspect-Oriented Software Architectures

The intertwining of Requirements and Software Architectures must be based on solid traceability mechanisms in order to effectively maintain the consistency between the two specifications. A new issue has come to the fore in this area: Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). Achieving the separation of concerns from the very beginning of software development along with their proper traceability throughout the lifecycle is mandatory in terms of quality and maintainability. ATRIUM is a methodology that is defined to guide the development of architectures from requirements and using AOSD techniques as its cornerstone. In this work, we present how ATRIUM uses a scenario technique that provides traceability support. ATRIUM pays special attention to non-functional requirements, their crosscutting relationships, and how they can derive aspects in the software architecture.