We advice to keep arc42 section 1.2 (quality goals) very short, there you show only the top 3-5 quality goals, with priorities.

Here, in arc42 section 10, we go into more detail:

  • Show your most important quality goals and -requirements as a (graphical) quality tree
  • Add links or references to your quality scenarios to that tree.

In software engineering literature, e.g. from the Software Engineering Institute, such tree-structures have been named Quality Attribute Utility Tree. They are integral part of the ATAM architecture analysis and evaluation method.

graphical quality tree example

Such a tree can provide a good overview of required qualities, it can document focus points. That is hardly possible in a longer list of quality scenarios.

Further references

Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz has written up a more detailed explanation of the quality tree.