Systematic construction of i* strategic dependency models for socio-technical systems (original) (raw)
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2015
In the software development cycle, requirements engineering plays a major role in the success of a software system. In early requirement engineering, various alternative design options for software are explored and the best ones are selected. The requirements analyst uses goal models to analyse different design alternatives. Goal models like the i*, and Tropos include inter-actor dependencies where an actor depends on other actors for its goal accomplishment. However, goal models like NonFunctional Requirements(NFR), Knowledge Acquisition in Automated Space (KAOS) do not include these type of inter-actor dependencies. Whilst there have been a number of both qualitative and quantitative proposed approaches to analysing goal models without using inter-actor dependency, this paper presents an approach to the automate analysis of goals using inter-actor dependencies and fuzzy concepts. A simulation for the proposed approach was developed in Visual C++ and was evaluated with case studies...
A Comparative Analysis of i*-Based Agent-Oriented Modeling Language
Agent-oriented models are frequently used in disciplines such as requirements engineering and organizational process modelling. i* is currently one of the most widespread notations used for this purpose. Due to its strategic nature, instead of a single definition, there exist several versions and variants, often not totally defined and even contradictory. In this paper we present a comparative study of the three most widespread i* variants: Eric Yu's seminal proposal, the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) and the language used in the TROPOS method. Next, we propose a generic conceptual model to be used as reference framework of these three variants and we show its use for generating specific models for the three mentioned variants, as well as for other existing proposals.
Information Technology & Management, 2009
The role of knowledge in organizations has been conceptualized in ways that range from viewing it as a primary input to the production process, to offering a knowledge-based view of the whole organization. While divergent in their approaches, the differing views increasingly emphasize the role of inter-functional and inter-organizational knowledge linkages in determining the performance of a firm (Grant and Baden-Fuller in J Manag Stud 41(1):61–84, 2004). This paper offers a conceptualization of these linkages in what is termed a knowledge dependency. Adopting the view of knowledge as the primary organizational resource (Grant in Strateg Manag J 17(Winter Special Issue):109–122, 1996), we use ideas and concepts from the resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik in The external control of organizations: a resource dependence perspective, 1978) and knowledge transformation cycle (Carlile and Rebentisch in Manag Sci 49(9):1180–1195, 2003) to identify relevant constructs and relationships needed to model these knowledge dependencies. Building on a number of already established modeling techniques, we propose a new modeling grammar that explicitly captures the appropriation of knowledge in activities needed to realize the identified goals, and the knowledge flows between the different actors in an application domain. The resulting script (strategic knowledge-based dependency diagram) is a conceptual model that aids in the analysis stage preceding the design of an information system that supports knowledge-based processes across organizations.
Application of Conceptual Structures in Requirements Modeling
2011
Requirements modeling has been applied in CASE technologies to formalize knowledge needed for constructing models of information systems. The problem is to acquire knowledge from requirements texts and represent it as intermediate requirements model for entity-relationships or object oriented modeling. Proposed approach is based on formalization of entities and their attributes as formal contexts. It is shown that formal contexts created on the set of conceptual graphs extracted from requirements text may serve as data source for requirements models have been applied in real CASE technologies.
2009
This chapter describes an agent-oriented requirements engineering approach that combines informal i* models with formal specifications in the multiagent system specification formalisms ConGolog and its extension CASL. This allows the requirements engineer to exploit the complementary features of the frameworks. i* can be used to model social dependencies between agents and how process design choices affect the agents’ goals. ConGolog or CASL can be used to model complex processes formally. We introduce an intermediate notation to support the mapping between i* models and ConGolog/CASL specifications. In the combined i*-CASL framework, agents’ goals and knowledge are represented as their subjective mental states, which allows for the formal analysis and verification of, among other things, complex agent interactions and incomplete knowledge. Our models can also serve as high-level specifications for multiagent systems.