Taking goal models downstream: A systematic roadmap

Abstract

Creating and reasoning with goal models is useful for capturing, understanding, and communicating about requirements in the early stages of information system (re)development. However, the utility of goal models is greatly enhanced when an awareness of system intentions can feed into other stages in the requirements analysis process (e.g. requirements elaboration, validation, planning), and can be used as part of the entire system life cycle (e.g., architecture, process design, coding, testing, monitoring, adaptation, and evolution). In order to understand the progress that has been made in integrating goal models with downstream system development, we ask: what approaches exist which map/integrate/transform goal-oriented languages to other software artifacts or languages? To answer this question, we conduct a systematic survey, producing a roadmap of work summarizing 174 publications. Results include a categorization of the “why?” and “how?” for each approach. Findings show that there are a wide variety of proposals with many proposed sources and targets, covering multiple paradigms, motivated by a variety of purposes. We conclude that although much work has been done in this area, the work is fragmented and is often still in a proposal stage.