The term 'non-functional requirements' lumps together many diverse
architecture and design concerns and parameters which have little in
common with one another except that they are beyond what can be
readily expressed in current architecture and design modeling
techniques (e.g., UML).

The Working Group will focus on one class of non-functional
requirements: performance-critical concerns. Performance-critical
concerns are often crucial design drivers for today's
software-intensive systems; particularly real-time and embedded
systems. The ability to model such concerns has potential impact on:

* capture and specification of performance expectations;
* performance aggregate analysis and prediction;
* architecture feasibility analysis;
* resource characterization, management, allocation and utilization;
* mission criticality: availability, fault-tolerance, and quality of service;
* model consistency (e.g., between diagrams, models, views and layers);
* conformance (e.g., expected versus implemented);
* impact of successive implementation refinement on performance
analysis and conformance; and
* making informed architectural design trade-offs.

The Working Group will initially focus on identity of limitations of
current techniques, to suggest improvements to practices and to help
the combined tool, process, project and vendor communities to provide
a more robust framework for practitioners in the construction of
performance-critical systems.

POCs for the Working Group are --
Mark Gerhardt      gerhmark@pacbell.net
Rich Hilliard           rich.hilliard@gmail.com