Can Goal Reasoning Techniques Be Used for Strategic Decision-Making?

Business strategies aim to operationalize an enterprise’s mission and visions by defining initiatives and choosing among alternative courses of action through some form of strategic analysis. However, existing analysis techniques (e.g., SWOT analysis, Five Forces Model) are invariably informal and sketchy, in sharp contrast to the formal and algorithmic counterparts developed in Conceptual Modeling and Software Engineering. Among such techniques, goal models and goal reasoning have become very prominent over the past twenty years, helping to model stakeholder requirements and the alternative ways these can be fulfilled. In this work we explore the applicability of goal models to conceptualize strategic business problems and capture viable alternatives in support of formal strategic decision-making. We show through a comparative study how analysis can be conducted on a realistic case adopted from the literature using existing goal modeling techniques, and identify their weaknesses and limitations that need to be addressed in order to accommodate strategic business analysis.