From Goal Models to Software Products - A Conceptual Modeling-Based Approach

A crucial success factor in information systems development is the alignment of the final software product with business goals, business semantics and business processes. Developers should be freed from programming concerns and be able to concentrate on these alignment problems. To assess that the right capabilities are used, sound Conceptual Modeling (CM) techniques within a Model-Driven system Development (MDD) must be applied in order to provide a structured and systematic approach to systems development, where developers can successfully use model transformation technologies to derive models of a lower abstraction level that can be further refined, even generating software code automatically. From the experience got with the use of advanced CM-based MDD platforms, this keynote will show how to start from an organizational goal-oriented (i*-based) model strategy in order to integrate Business Process Modeling (BPM), requirements engineering, and object-oriented CM with the objective of designing a software product that is conceptually aligned with the different types of conceptual models that have to be used in a conventional software production process. Concrete principles, concepts and common MDD-based practices will be presented with a special focus on model-driven requirements engineering, meaning by it how organizational and BPM models can be embedded in a complete CM-based software production process.