Managing Conflicts in Goal-Driven Requirements Engineering

A wide range of inconsistencies can arise during requirements engineering as goals and requirements are elicited from multiple stakeholders. Resolving such inconsistencies sooner or later in the process is a necessary condition for successful development of the software implementing those requirements. The paper first reviews the main types of inconsistency that can arise during requirements elaboration, defining them in an integrated framework and exploring their interrelationships. It then concentrates on the specific case of conflicting formulations of goals and requirements among different stakeholder viewpoints or within a single viewpoint. A frequent, weaker form of conflict called divergence is introduced and studied in depth. Formal techniques and heuristics are proposed for detecting conflicts and divergences from specifications of goals/requirements and of domain properties. Various techniques are then discussed for resolving conflicts and divergences systematically by the introduction of new goals or by transforming the specifications of goals/objects toward conflict-free versions. Numerous examples are given throughout the paper to illustrate the practical relevance of the concepts and techniques presented. The latter are discussed in the framework of the KAOS methodology for goal-driven requirements engineering.