Non-Functional Requirements of NewAccess

NewAccess is a mental health project by Headspace that has a purpose of safekeeping the records or the story of the patients when it is being told for the first time in front of a professional. This project is proposed as mental ill health patients need to watch many professionals and there they have to re tell their story every time. This results in a condition where the patient clam up and say very little about their problems. This makes it difficult for the professionals to recommend correct medications to the patients. With this new system NewAccess that is being proposed, it will be possible to eliminate these issues associated with the treatment of the mentally ill patients. The report gives an idea of the non functional requirements. The report discusses the appropriate cloud environment chosen for the project evaluating the strength and weaknesses of the project. The report gives an overview of the chosen SDLC approach for project implementation (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The differences between the predicative and the adaptive SDLC approach are further discussed in the report.  

It is important to identify the non functional requirements of a system in the implementation of a project. This is because the system’s non functional requirement specifies the criteria that can be used for judging a system’s operations. Thus, the non functional requirements of a system are often described as the quality attribute of a system. The non functional requirement of the NewAccess system that is being developed is identified on basis of FURPS+ acronym.  The non functional requirement associated with the functionality, usability, reliability, performance and security of the system is elaborated in the following section.  

Functionality is one of the most important aspects of system implementation. The system should be able to function as per the requirements and for that, it is essential to enforce certain features that improve the functionality of the system.

The usability of the system is a major non functional requirement of the project or thesystem. NewAccess system should incorporate the non functional requirement of usability. The application should be user friendly so that it can be used by the patients and the professionals. Apart from that the system should include the feature of automatic report generation of the patients’ health condition.

The application to be developed should be reliable enough so that the confidential and the sensitive information of the patient can be stored in that system. It  is essential to ensure that the frequency of failure is less in the system. The system should have easier recoverability so that the confidential data can be stored in the system. Therefore, the reliability of the system is an essential non functional requirement of the system.

Functionality

The performance measurement is an important aspect of a system that is to be developed. It is needed to ensure that the information system that is being developed has good performance level. The project should have a higher response time along with a high throughput. It is essential for the system to ensure that the result that has been provided by the system will have a high accuracy level. The system should ensure easier data availability and the resource usage should be limited as well. Thus, performance is an important aspect of the functionality of the system that is being developed.

Security is an important aspect of a system that is being developed. The confidential and the sensitive information of the patients are being stored in the system and therefore it should be secure. Encryption is a non functional requirement that can be implemented in the system for ensuring accurate data protection. Furthermore, it is recommended for the project team to implement the feature of registration. Registration and encryption will ensure accurate security of the system that is to be developed. The data should be available only to the individuals who have the permission to access the data. Thus accurate authorisation control will ensure appropriate data protection. Thus, it is needed to enforce appropriate security of the information system that is to be implemented.  

The project team has planned to use of a cloud based approach for data storage. Since the system will be saving the confidential and the sensitive data of the patients, it is necessary to ensure a secure data storage in cloud. Therefore, it is essential to make a correct choice of the cloud approach on which the system will be implemented. The use of public cloud although would have been a cost effective approach, it is not secure enough since the data is publicly available (Pluzhnik, Nikulchev & Payain, 2014). The use of private cloud is further not recommended for the system since the cost of implementation of the system will be high (Goyal, 2014). The data availability will be reduced with the implementation of private cloud. The use of hybrid cloud is recommended for the system since it will ensure accurate security of the data that is stored in the system and will also ensure easy data accessibility. The use of hybrid cloud is recommended as it has a number of advantages. The advantages and the disadvantages of making use of hybrid cloud for NewAccess are represented in the following sections.

Usability

The different advantages of hybrid cloud computing are as follows (Li et al., 2015)-

1. It is a technology that combines the use of both public and the private cloud and therefore it is recommended for NewAccess.
2. The use of hybrid cloud approach helps in increased scalability and easier implementation (Hatley & Pirbhai, 2013).
3. The use of hybrid cloud will ensure accurate security of the data stored and therefore the use of this system is recommended

The disadvantages of the hybrid cloud approach chosen, are as follows (Li et al., 2013)-

1. The implementation cost of system in hybrid cloud is more than that of the public cloud (Fuggetta & Di Nitto, 2014).
2. There might be certain compatibility issues associated with the implementation of the system in a hybrid cloud approach  

The system will be implemented by choosing an appropriate software development methodology. The predictive and the adaptive SDLC approaches are highlighted in the following section.

Predictive SDLC is a software development methodology that assumes that a particular project is planned in advance (Fenton & Bieman, 2014). A planned approach is followed in project implementation and this model of project development ensures that the project is delivered the time specified.  The predictive SDLC approach is therefore appropriate for the projects that have a clear requirement. The advantages and the disadvantages of predictive SDLC approach are discussed as follows.

Pros/Advantages

The advantages of making use of predictive SDLC model are as follows-

1. With predictive SDLC, it is possible to implement a project within a scheduled time
2. The predictive SDLC model helps in implementation of the project according to the requirements.

Cons/Disadvantages

The disadvantages of the predictive SDLC model are as follows-

1. In this approach no change in the requirements is possible in the implementation phase of the project.
2. Predictive SDLC approach is not much helpful in implementation of complex projects.

Adaptive SDLC model ensures implementation of the project according to the requirements of the clients (Highsmith, 2013). The process of implementation in adaptive SDLC provides extensive opportunities to the clients and the stakeholders to implement the project according to the requirements. The advantages and disadvantages of the system are as follows.

Pros/Advantages

The advantages of adaptive SDLC are as follows (Abrahamsson et al., 2017)-

1. It can incorporate changes in the project in its implementation stage
2. The project is delivered according to the requirements of the clients.

Cons/Disadvantages

The disadvantages of this system are as follows (Stark, 2015)-

1. The implementation time is quite high
2. Changes in the requirements increase the complexity of the project.

An adaptive SDLC model is recommended for this project since the project is to be implemented according to the requirements specified by Headspace. Furthermore, thorough testing of the system is needed to be ensured so that working system can be released (Moniruzzaman & Hossain, 2013). Although the project is not complex, it requires accurate monitoring and therefore, adaptive approach is recommended.

Conclusion 

The report discusses the need of implementing the system NewAccess. It identifies the non functional requirements that the system should consider and evaluates the need fo the identified non functional requirements. The report further proposes the use of hybrid cloud approach in project implementation so that a secure project can be implemented. The report compares between the adaptive and the predictive SDLC models and recommends the use of adaptive SDLC model in project implementation. The use of adaptive SDLC is recommended mainly because it will implement the project according to the requirements of the clients and will ensure accurate testing phases. Thus adaptive SDLC will be appropriate for theis project.

References 

Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2017). Agile software development methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08439.

Fenton, N., & Bieman, J. (2014). Software metrics: a rigorous and practical approach. CRC press.

Fuggetta, A., & Di Nitto, E. (2014, May). Software process. In Proceedings of the on Future of Software Engineering (pp. 1-12). ACM.

Goyal, S. (2014). Public vs private vs hybrid vs community-cloud computing: a critical review. International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security, 6(3), 20.

Hatley, D., & Pirbhai, I. (2013). Strategies for real-time system specification. Addison-Wesley.

Highsmith, J. R. (2013). Adaptive software development: a collaborative approach to managing complex systems. Addison-Wesley.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Li, J., Li, Y. K., Chen, X., Lee, P. P., & Lou, W. (2015). A hybrid cloud approach for secure authorized deduplication. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 26(5), 1206-1216.

Li, Q., Wang, Z. Y., Li, W. H., Li, J., Wang, C., & Du, R. Y. (2013). Applications integration in a hybrid cloud computing environment: Modelling and platform. Enterprise Information Systems, 7(3), 237-271.

Moniruzzaman, A. B. M., & Hossain, D. S. A. (2013). Comparative Study on Agile software development methodologies. arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.3356.

Pluzhnik, E., Nikulchev, E., & Payain, S. (2014, June). Optimal control of applications for hybrid cloud services. In Services (SERVICES), 2014 IEEE World Congress on (pp. 458-461). IEEE.

Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.