AFSCR: Annotation of Functional Satisfaction Conditions and their Reconciliation within i* models

Context: Researchers, both in industry and academia, are facing the challenge of leveraging the benefits of goal oriented requirements engineering (GORE) techniques to business compliance management. This requires analyzing goal models along with their semantics. However, most prominent goal modeling frameworks have no means of capturing the semantics of goals (except what is trivially conveyed by their nomenclature). Objective: In this paper, we propose the Annotation of Functional Satisfaction Conditions and their Reconciliation (AFSCR) framework for doing the same. The entire framework is presented with respect to i* modeling constructs. Method: This is a semi-automated framework that requires analysts to annotate individual goals with their immediate goal satisfaction conditions. The AFSCR framework can then reconcile these satisfaction conditions for every goal and verify whether the derived set of cumulative satisfaction conditions is in harmony with the intended set of goal satisfaction conditions. Result: If the derived and intended sets of satisfaction conditions are in conflict, the framework raises entailment and/or consistency flags. Whenever a conflict is flagged, the framework also provides alternate solutions and possible workaround strategies to the analysts by refactoring the given i* model. Conclusion: In this paper we present a new framework that uses satisfaction conditions for going beyond the nomenclature and capturing the functional semantics of the goals within i* models. The analysis performed during the reconciliation process is generic enough and can be adapted to any goal modeling framework if required.