  Software non-functional requirements address a multitude of objectives,
expectations, and even liabilities that must be considered during development
and operation. Typically, these non-functional requirements originate from
different domains and their concrete scope, notion, and demarcation to
functional requirements is often ambiguous. In this study we seek to categorize
and analyze relevant work related to software engineering in a DevOps context
in order to clarify the different focus areas, themes, and objectives
underlying non-functional requirements and also to identify future research
directions in this field. We conducted a systematic mapping study, including
142 selected primary studies, extracted the focus areas, and synthesized the
themes and objectives of the described NFRs. In order to examine
non-engineering-focused studies related to non-functional requirements in
DevOps, we conducted a backward snowballing step and additionally included 17
primary studies. Our analysis revealed 7 recurrent focus areas and 41 themes
that characterize NFRs in DevOps, along with typical objectives for these
themes. Overall, the focus areas and themes of NFRs in DevOps are very diverse
and reflect the different perspectives required to align software engineering
with technical quality, business, compliance, and organizational
considerations. The lack of methodological support for specifying, measuring,
and evaluating fulfillment of these NFRs in DevOps-driven projects offers ample
opportunities for future research in this field. Particularly, there is a need
for empirically validated approaches for operationalizing
non-engineering-focused objectives of software.
