Representation of Conflicts in Non-Functional Requirement using Conceptual Graphs

In software engineering process, the conflict of non-functional requirements (NFR) is one of major problems during analysis and design phase. Since NFR is difficult to be understood and may be interfered, conflicted, or contradicted with other NFRs. In addition, many of NFRs relate to the same quality attribute which leads to the requirement conflict problem. This paper presents a knowledge representation method for detecting the conflicts in NFRs using the conceptual graphs. The proposed method enhances the understanding of NFR. Subsequently, the requirement conflicts between NFRs model can be detected using reasoning process with conceptual graph. The case study of billing system in telecommunication company is discussed for a feasibility and an effectiveness of the proposed method.