Goal-based requirements analysis

Abstract

Goals are a logical mechanism for identifying, organizing and justifying software requirements. Strategies are needed for the initial identification and construction of goals. We discuss goals from the perspective of two themes: goal analysis and goal evolution. We begin with an overview of the goal-based method we have developed and summarize our experiences in applying our method to a relatively large example. We illustrate some of the issues that practitioners face when using a goal-based approach to specify the requirements for a system and close the paper with a discussion of needed future research on goal-based requirements analysis and evolution.