A controlled experiment to evaluate the understandability of KAOS and i* for modeling Teleo-Reactive systems

作者：Miguel Morales Jose; Navarro Elena; Sanchez Pedro^*; Alonso Diego

来源：Journal of Systems and Software, 2015, 100: 1-14.

DOI：10.1016/j.jss.2014.10.010

• Teleo-Reactive
• Requirements engineering
• Controlled experiment

Context: Teleo-Reactive (TR) specifications allow engineers to define the behavior of reactive systems while taking into account goals and changes in the state of the environment.
Objective: This article evaluates two different Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering notations, i* and KAOS, to determine their understandability level for specifying TR systems.
Method: A controlled experiment was performed by two groups of Bachelor students. Each group first analyzed a requirements model of a mobile robotic system, specified using one of the evaluated languages, and then they filled in a questionnaire to evaluate its understandability. Afterwards, each group proceeded similarly with the model of another system specified with the second language.
Results: The statistical analysis of the data obtained by means of the experiment showed that the understandability of i* is higher than that of KAOS when modeling TR systems.
Conclusion: Both languages are suitable for specifying TR systems although their notations should be specialized to maximize the understandability attribute. i* surpasses KAOS due to two main reasons: i* models represent dependencies between agents and goals or tasks; and notational differences between tasks and goals in i* are more evident than those between goals and requirements in KAOS.

• 出版日期2015-2