From Entities and Relationships to Social Actors and Dependencies

Modeling social settings is becoming an increasingly important activity in software development and other conceptual modeling applications. In this paper, we review i* [Yu95], a conceptual model specifically intended for representing social settings. Then, we introduce Tropos, a formal language founded on the primitive concepts of i*, and demonstrate its expressiveness through examples. Finally, we give an overview of a project which uses Tropos to support software development from early requirements analysis to detailed design.

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