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A questionnaire-based survey methodology for systematically validating goal-oriented models

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Abstract

Goal models represent interests, intentions, and strategies of different stakeholders. Reasoning about the goals of a system unavoidably involves the transformation of unclear stakeholder requirements into goal-oriented models. The ability to validate goal models would support the early detection of unclear requirements, ambiguities, and conflicts. In this paper, we propose a novel validation approach based on the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) to check the correctness of GRL goal models through statistical analyses of data collected from generated questionnaires. System stakeholders (e.g., customers, shareholders, and managers) may have different objectives, interests, and priorities. Stakeholder conflicts arise when the needs of some group of stakeholder compromise the expectations of some other group(s) of stakeholders. Our proposed approach allows for early detection of potential conflicts amongst intervening stakeholders of the system. In order to illustrate and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, we apply it to a case study of a GRL model describing the fostering of the relationship between the university and its alumni. The approach brings unique benefits over the state of the art and is complementary to existing validation approaches.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals for funding this work through project No. IN111017.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, P.O. Box 1621, Dhahran, 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Jameleddine Hassine

  2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward St., Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Daniel Amyot

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  1. Jameleddine Hassine
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Correspondence to Jameleddine Hassine.

Appendix: SPSS generated histograms

Appendix: SPSS generated histograms

See Figs. 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Fig. 12
figure 12

Histograms for questions Q1 to Q6, Q11, and Q12 (alumnus), on a 1-to-7 Likert scale

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Fig. 13
figure 13

Histograms for questions Q15 to Q17 (professor), on a 1-to-7 Likert scale

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Fig. 14
figure 14

Histograms for questions Q18 to Q23 (alumni department), on a 1-to-7 Likert scale

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Fig. 15
figure 15

Histograms for questions Q24 and Q25 (university), on a 1-to-7 Likert scale

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Hassine, J., Amyot, D. A questionnaire-based survey methodology for systematically validating goal-oriented models. Requirements Eng 21, 285–308 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-015-0221-7

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