Looking into the Crystal Ball: Requirements Evolution over Time

Abstract

Goal modeling has long been used in the literature to model and reason about system requirements, constraints within the domain and environment, and stakeholders' goals. Goal model analysis helps stakeholders answer 'what if' questions enabling them to make tradeoff decisions about their project requirements. However, questions concerning the evolution over time of stakeholder requirements or changes in actor intentionality are not explicitly addressed by current approaches. In this paper, we tackle this problem by presenting a method for specifying changes in intentions over time, and a technique that uses simulation for asking a variety of 'what if' questions about such models. Using the development of a web-based modeling tool as an example, we demonstrate that this technique is effective for debugging goal models and answering stakeholder questions.