Ontological distinctions between means-end and contribution links in the i* framework

Abstract

The i* framework is a renowned Requirements Engineering approach. This work is part of an ongoing effort to provide ontological interpretations for the i* core concepts. With this, we aim at proposing a more uniform use of the language, in a way that it can be more easily learned by newcomers and more efficiently transferred to industry. Our approach is based on the application of a foundational ontology named UFO, which is used as a semantically coherent reference model to which the language should be isomorphic. In this paper, we focus on the Means-end and the Contribution links. We aim at presenting the community with some possible ontological interpretations of these links, aiming at promoting constructive debate and receiving feedback about the validity of our assumptions.