An integrated approach of AHP and NFRs framework

One of the challenging areas in dealing with Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) is the need for a decision support system which helps in a better trade-off among alternative operationalizations in the potential solution space for the NFRs. Dealing with such a trade-off is popularly treated with a qualitative fashion through the NFRs framework. In this paper, we propose the incorporation of the mathematical based trade-off technique: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to quantitatively deal with ambiguities, trade-offs, priorities and interdependencies among NFRs and operationalizations when using the NFRs framework. Such usage of the AHP technique within the NFRs framework will bring the benefits of the mathematically based trade-off techniques to the NFRs framework and eliminates the drawbacks associated with model-based trade-off techniques which the NFRs framework belongs to.