Flexible Modeling Tools for Pre-requirements Analysis: Conceptual Architecture and Research Challenges

There is a serious tool gap at the very start of the software lifecycle, before requirements are formulated. Pre-requirements analysts gather information, organize it to gain insight, envision alternative possible futures, and present insights and recommendations to stakeholders. They typically use office tools, which give them great freedom, but no help with consistency management, change propagation or migration of information to downstream modeling tools. Despite these downsides to office tools, they are still used in preference to modeling tools, which are too hard to learn and too constraining. This paper introduces the notion of flexible modeling tools, which blend the advantages of office and modeling tools. We propose a conceptual architecture for such tools, and outline a series of research challenges to be met in the course of realizing them. We also briefly describe the Business Insight Toolkit (BITKit), a prototype tool that embodies this architecture.

By: Harold Ossher, Rachel Bellamy, Ian Simmonds, David Amid, Ateret Anaby-Tavor, Matthew Callery, Michael Desmond, Jacqueline de Vries, Amit Fisher, Sophia Krasikov

Published in: RC24873 in 2009

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