Performance Requirements

Definition

A performance requirement is a user-oriented quality requirement that specifies a required amount of performance, which is a quality factor that is defined as follows:

Performance

a timing characteristic.

Objectives

The typical objectives of a performance requirement are to ensure that the business, application or component:

• Has an adequate capacity to handle actual usage conditions.
• Minimizes latency and response times for its users and client applications.
• Behaviors happen according to required schedules.
• Has an adequate throughput to support its users and client applications.

Types

The following are different kinds of performance requirements:

• Jitter Requirements.
• Latency Requirements.
• Response Time Requirements.
• Schedulability Requirements.
• Throughput Requirements.

Guidelines

The following guidelines have been found to be useful when producing performance requirements:

• The scope of a performance requirement can be:
  • A business enterprise
  • An application
  • A component
  • A center
• Remember that the performance of software components depends greatly on the associated hardware components and that the power of hardware components evolves rapidly.
• Although performance requirements are specified early, they are implemented later because a typical development approach is to “Make it run, make it correct, and then make it fast.”
• See the guidelines subsections for:
  • Jitter Requirements.
  • Latency Requirements.
  • Response Time Requirements.
  • Scheduling Requirements.
  • Throughput Requirements.