[gfairbanks]

It's often taught as "nonfunctional requirements" or NFRs. The architecture community says "quality attributes". Why?

1) Not all qualities are requirements. Requirements tend to be pass/fail, either you meet them or you don't. Latency is a quality and typically lower is better, not pass/fail (though sometimes it is).

2) "Nonfunctional" in other contexts means broken. If you saw a machine with a sign on it saying "nonfunctional" what would you conclude?

At one point I tried to find the origin of the term "quality attributes". It's way older than the software community. I found it being used in the 1960's by the US National Academy of Sciences. If anyone knows the origin I'm interested in learning more.