QUPER-MAn: Benchmark-Guided Target Setting for Maintainability Requirements

Maintainable source code is essential for sustainable development. Yet, many studies show that maintainability often receives less attention than it deserves. We argue that requirements engineering can help close this gap by fostering discussions and setting appropriate targets in a responsible manner. In this preliminary work, we explore industry practices related to requirements engineering for maintainability. Our findings confirm previous studies: maintainability remains a second-class quality concern. Explicit requirements often make sweeping references to coding conventions. Tools providing maintainability proxies are common but typically only used in implicit requirements related to engineering practices. To address this, we propose QUPER-MAn, a maintainability adaption of the QUPER model, originally developed for performance requirements. Developed using a design science approach, QUPER-MAn integrates maintainability benchmarks and supports target setting. We posit that it can shift maintainability from an overlooked development consequence to an actively managed goal driven by informed and responsible engineering decisions.