A Contemporary View on Software Quality Requirements in Agile and Software Architecture Practices

Quality can be a very elusive concept that can be approached from a number of perspectives dependent on once take and interest. Evidence that relates software process to quality is often anecdotal or, when data is presented, it is to some extent contradictory or clashes with opposite evidence coming from different samples. Also, the influence of quality on software architecture is mostly described in a qualitative fashion based on architects expertise. Little contemporary data exists to document the actual perception from software experts in industry towards quality requirements for software products. Therefore, a comprehensive survey of software professionals was conducted to attempt to discover these practices. In this paper, we present a view of the captured data from this survey with a focus on investigating the influence of quality requirements on the software architectural decisions in practice.