1.2. Quality Goals
Ar42 specifications helper
Contents
The top three (max five) quality goals for the architecture whose fulfillment is of highest importance to the major stakeholders. We really mean quality goals for the architecture. Don’t confuse them with project goals. They are not necessarily identical.
Motivation
You should know the quality goals of your most important stakeholders, since they will influence fundamental architectural decisions. Make sure to be very concrete about these qualities, avoid buzzwords. If you as an architect do not know how the quality of your work will be judged …
Form
A table with quality goals and concrete scenarios, ordered by priorities
| # | Quality goal (ISO 25010 term) | Why it matters / key stakeholders | Concrete scenario (stimulus → response + measure) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Time-Behaviour / Responsiveness | RFQ Managers and suppliers must be able to create, send or answer an RFQ while they are on the phone with each other; slow screens stop the process. | - Stimulus: At peak (20 internal searches s⁻¹ + 10 quote uploads s⁻¹) a user opens the “Provider research" and clicks Send RFQ. - Response: 95 % of screens paint in ≤ 1 s and the underlying REST call returns in ≤ 300 ms. |
| 2 | Confidentiality & Integrity (Security) | Customer handles commercially sensitive day-rates, provider evaluation and list of events; leakage would break NDAs and damage trust with providers (Legal, Procurement, Suppliers). | Stimulus: An unauthorised account tries to read a Quote, read another Provider Evaluation, Submit a quote to a RFQ is not requested for. Response: Request is refused with a HTTP 403, logged in ≤ 200 ms; |
| 3 | Modifiability / Evolvability | The tool is a first step toward a wider SRM suite; Product & DevOps want to add new service categories and integrate with an ERP later. | Stimulus: Product owner requests support for a new Technical specification “Broadcast Standards” with the follwing values ATSC, NTSC, PAL, SECAM. Source : https://www.datapro.net/techinfo/videodoc.html Response: Domain model and one additional list field are live in < 5 person-days without downtime; existing tests still pass. |
| 4 | Interoperability / Integration-Readiness | Future phases will push POs to ERP and pull invoices from Finance; architects need a predictable interface contract. | Stimulus: An SAP integration service requests 100 RFQs via the public OpenAPI endpoint. Response: Service delivers the batch in JSON within 200 ms average, and the API versioning policy guarantees non-breaking changes for ≥ 12 months. |
Notes for reviewers
- These 4 dimension were chosen with PO and Customer during project; “performance & usability” and “security” were ranked highest.
- The numbers are derived from the non-functional requirements captured in the project brief and sized for ~200 total users (30-50 customer staff, 100-150 suppliers).
- Each scenario is intentionally brief here; the full quality-attribute scenarios (source, environment, stimulus, artefact, response, measure) will appear in §10 (Quality Requirements) of the Arc42 document.