On the adequacy of i* models for representing and analyzing software architectures

Abstract

In order to work at the software architecture level, specification languages and analysis techniques are needed. There exist many proposals that serve that purpose, but few of them address architecture and requirements altogether, leaving a gap between both disciplines. Goal-oriented approaches are suitable for bridging this gap because they allow representing architecture-related concepts (components, nodes, files, etc.) and more abstract concepts (goals, non-functional requirements, etc.) by using the same constructs. In this paper we explore the suitability of the i* goal-oriented approach for representing software architectures. For doing so, we check its properties against the ones suitable for Architecture Description Languages and we define some criteria for solving the unfulfilled aspects in representing the architectures. This paper assumes basic notions on i*.