Abstract i* models have been used for requirements specification in many domains, such as healthcare, telecommunication, and air traffic control. Managing the scalability and the complexity of such models is an important challenge in Requirements Engineering (RE). Scalability is also one of the most intractable issues in the design of visual notations in general: a well-known problem with visual representations is that they do not scale well. This issue has led us to investigate scalability in i* models and its variants by means of a systematic mapping study. This paper is an extended version of a previous paper on the scalability of i* including papers indicated by specialists. Moreover, we also discuss the challenges and open issues regarding scalability of i* models and its variants. A total of 126 papers were analyzed in order to understand: how the RE community perceives scalability; and which proposals have considered this topic. We found that scalability issues are indeed perceived as relevant and that further work is still required, even though many potential solutions have already been proposed. This study can be a starting point for researchers aiming to further advance the treatment of scalability in i* models.

Nowadays Computational Systems are being characterized by their complexity, dynamism and great strategic importance. In this complex context of software specification, generating high quality documentation is very difficult. Usually, clients are not sure about their needs and sometimes software requirements do not represent clients and organizational environment needs. Inconsistent and incomplete requirements are very frequent. One of the challenges to solve this problem is to integrate organizational and functional requirements of the system to be developed. In this paper the JGOOSE (Java Goal into Object Oriented Standard Extension) tool used to assist requirement engineers in the development of use cases from the organizational models represented by i* technique is presented. To validate the tool, it was used and applied to the Conference Management System case study.

En los días actuales los sistemas computacionales se caracterizan por su complejidad, dinamismo y gran importancia estratégica. En este complejo escenario de especificación de software, generar documentación de alta calidad es una difícil tarea. En general los clientes no saben exactamente lo que desean y muchas veces los requisitos del software no reflejan las reales necesidades de los clientes y del ambiente organizacional. Es bastante común encontrar requisitos inconsistentes e incompletos. En este contexto, uno de los grandes desafíos está en la necesidad de integrar los requisitos organizacionales y funcionales del sistema computacional que será desarrollado. En este trabajo se presenta la herramienta computacional JGOOSE (Java Goal Into Object Oriented Standard Extension) que permite integrar diagramas de casos de uso en UML con requisitos organizacionales representados utilizando la técnica i*. Se presenta la utilización de la herramienta en el caso de estudio de un Sistema de Gestión de Evento Científico.

Requirements Engineering has been considered a key activity in any Software Engineering process. It is well known that a requirements specification should include not only software specifications but also business models and other kinds of information describing the context in which the intended system will function. In recent years we have observed a growing influence of the object-orientation paradigm. Unfortunately, the current dominant object oriented modeling technique, i.e. Unified Modeling Technique, is ill equipped for modeling early requirements which are typically informal and often focus on Organizational objectives. UML is more suitable for later phases of requirements capture, which usually focus on completeness, consistency, and automated verification of functional requirements for the new system. In this paper, we present some guidelines for the integration of early and late requirements specifications. For the organizational modeling we use the i* framework, which focuses on the description of organizational relationships among various organizational actors, as well as an understanding of the rationale for the alternatives chosen. For the functional requirements specification, we rely on a precise subset of the Unified Modeling Language annotated with constraints described in the Object Constraint Language. A small example is used to illustrate how the requirements process iterates between the early and late requirements specification.