Assessing the effectiveness of goal-oriented modeling languages: A family of experiments

[EN] Context Several goal-oriented languages focus on modeling stakeholders' objectives, interests or wishes. However, these languages can be used for various purposes (e.g., exploring system solutions or evaluating alternatives), and there are few guidelines on how to use these models downstream to the software requirements and design artifacts. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the empirical evaluation of this kind of languages. In a previous work, we proposed value@GRL as a specialization of the Goal Requirements Language (GRL) to specify stakeholders' goals when dealing with early requirements in the context of incremental software development. Objective: This paper compares the value@GRL language with the i* language, with respect to the quality of goal models, the participants' modeling time and productivity when creating the models, and their perceptions regarding ease of use and usefulness. Method: A family of experiments was carried out with 184 students and practitioners in which the participants were asked to specify a goal model using each of the languages. The participants also filled in a questionnaire that allowed us to assess their perceptions. Results: The results of the individual experiments and the meta-analysis indicate that the quality of goal models obtained with value@GRL is higher than that of i*, but that the participants required less time to create the goal models when using i*. The results also show that the participants perceived value@GRL to be easier to use and more useful than i* in at least two experiments of the family. Conclusions: value@GRL makes it possible to obtain goal models with good quality when compared to i*, which is one of the most frequently used goal-oriented modeling languages. It can, therefore, be considered as a promising emerging approach in this area. Several insights emerged from the study and opportunities for improving both languages are outlined.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Adapt@Cloud project, grant number TIN2017-84550-R) and the Programa de Ayudas de Investigación y Desarrollo (PAID-01-17) from the Universitat Politècnica de València.Abrahao Gonzales, SM.; Insfran, E.; González-Ladrón-De-Guevara, F.; Fernández-Diego, M.; Cano-Genoves, C.; Pereira De Oliveira, R. (2019). Assessing the effectiveness of goal-oriented modeling languages: A family of experiments. Information and Software Technology. 116:1-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2019.08.003S12411

Extensión y mejora de un método de especificación de valor para la derivación y priorización de procesos de negocio

Nowadays, a great number of applications are developed incrementally, giving rise to the need to prioritize the elements that will be included in each increment. For this purpose, a method for the specification of value in business processes has been proposed by the ISSI research group at the UPV. This method not only help to prioritize the elements of each increment with respect to its value, but can also be used for the generation of business process models. This Master Final Work (TFM) has two objectives: on the one hand, it intends to carry out an extension and improvement of the method with respect to the prioritization of business processes based on the value and to define the mappings for the transformation between the value model and the business processes. On the other hand, to perform the empirical validation of the modeling language developed Value@GRL in comparison to the objective modeling language of i*. This work will be developed in the context of the Value@Cloud project.Hoy en día gran cantidad de aplicaciones se desarrollan de forma incremental, dando lugar a la necesidad de priorizar los elementos que se incluirán en cada incremento. Para tal propósito, en el grupo de investigación ISSI de la UPV se ha propuesto un método para la especificación de valor en procesos de negocio el cual no sólo ayuda a priorizar los elementos de cada incremento con respecto a su valor, sino que también puede ser utilizado para la generación de modelos de procesos de negocio. Este TFM tiene dos objetivos: por un lado, se pretende realizar una extensión y mejora del método con respecto a la priorización de procesos de negocio basado en el valor y definir los mapeos para la transformación entre el modelo de valor y los procesos de negocio. Por otro lado, realizar la validación empírica del lenguaje de modelado desarrollado Value@GRL en comparación con el lenguaje de modelado de objetivos de i*. Este trabajo se desarrollará en el contexto del proyecto de [email protected] Genovés, C. (2017). Extensión y mejora de un método de especificación de valor para la derivación y priorización de procesos de negocio. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/86111TFG