Assessing the Intuitiveness of Qualitative Contribution Relationships in Goal Models: An Exploratory Experiment

[Background]: Developing conceptual models is an integral part of the requirements engineering (RE) process. Goal models are requirements engineering conceptual models that allow diagrammatic representation of stakeholder intentions and how they affect each other. A specific goal modeling language construct, the contribution of goal satisfaction of one goal to another, plays a central role in supporting decision problem exploration within goal models. We report on an experiment whose aim was to measure the user perception of the meaning of the aforementioned modeling construct. A set of contributions under different scenarios were given to experimental participants who were asked what they thought the effect of the contribution was. We found that participants are not always in agreement either within themselves or with the designers' intentions on the meaning of the language. The results call for possible adaptations to the way goal modeling languages are used.