Return to Non-Functional Requirements
Manageability is most important during the second half of System Lifecycle phases (i.e. operation, maintenance, support). Manageability can greatly influence the recurring costs and can increase the chances of a failure. Often a system that is hard to manage is described as fragile since the smallest change can have dire consequences on the system's functionality.
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Manageability directly influences a system's reliability, availability, security, and safety; therefore, it is a key ingredient of system dependability.
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Just like security and safety, manageability is generally hard to retrofit in complex systems—it is always easier to build it in from day one. However, in the absence of means to measure manageability and quantify the various tradeoffs, it is difficult to get the design right. We proposed a manageability metric that combines management workloads and weightings based on real world studies with direct measurement of the number of steps involved in management tasks and their duration. 1)