Nonfunctional requirements continue to be challenging. In particular, rigorous software quality definitions and objectives, systematic attainment, and satisfactory validation are among the most difficult aspects of system development. This report is a summary of a workshop on the adaptability of systems to different contexts: The First International Workshop on Variability for Qualities in Software Architecture, held jointly with the 2015 European Conference on Software Architecture.

The scope of software quality is broad, pertaining to all aspects of software development, performance, and maintenance. Thus, the workshop focused on software architecture aspects of software quality because of its pervasive influence.

The authors of this summary report concisely describe the keynote, paper presentations, and working group discussions. In addition, this report calls for more research on software quality variability commensurate with that on functional variability.

The summary report does not provide any information on the nontechnical aspects of the workshop, for example, attendance and type of attendees, workshop issues, lessons learned, and so on.

This brief report will interest software researchers, developers, and teachers. As technical maturity evolves to higher abstract levels, it is interesting to note the corresponding increase in scope of topics and relationships that are involved and, also, that lower-level concepts influence initial research at the next level, for example, programming language models, type variables, patterns and templates, and so on. However, significant advances to the next higher level also depend on new discoveries. But that is why the authors have issued a call for research.