Goal-oriented Requirements Analysis and Reasoning in the Tropos Methodology

Tropos is an agent-oriented software methodology proposed in (J. Autonomous Agents Multi-Agent Syst. 8(3) (2004) 203; Inf. Syst. 27(6) (2002) 365). The methodology is founded on the notions of agent and goal, and goal analysis is used extensively to support software development during different phases. This paper adopts a formal goal model defined and analyzed in (J. Data Semantics 1 (2003); Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE’04, vol. 3804 of LNCS, Springer, Berlin, 2004, pp. 20–33) to make the goal analysis process concrete through the use of forward and backward reasoning for goal models. The formal goal analysis is illustrated through examples, using an implemented goal reasoning tool.