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Optima: a domain-specific model for prioritization and conflicts management in requirements engineering for services intermediaries

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Abstract

New business models are set up, thanks to Web technologies. In this work, we focus on services intermediary companies. They generate value through the (automatic) selection of third-party services and the (automatic) delivery of the combinations of these services to consumers. Such companies face the problem of deciding which services to select and deliver in order to maximize their profit. The two main paper objectives are (i) to design the generic business model of services intermediaries and (ii) to propose an optimization model. The latter enables to choose the consumer requirements that will be satisfied in order to maximize profit. This model ranks implementable solutions based on various financial aspects. They are related to cost and revenue information that is associated with the requirements. It can support the decision-making process that aims at selecting a profit-maximizing set of requirements for services intermediaries’ system-to-be. Indeed, the proposed model solves the conflicts between requirements and prioritizes the optional requirements. We argue for the relevance of the optimization model via an example and simulations.

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Notes

  1. In order to differentiate two notions commonly called “service” in their respective domains, we call the concept of “service” in the soc an it service, and the business service keeps its short denomination, that is to say service. The latter can be defined as “a change in the condition of a person, or a good belonging to some economic entity, brought about as the result of the activity of some other economic entity [...]” [18].

  2. See the explanations provided by Google at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/?hl=fr (Last consultation on November \(2012\), the 5th).

  3. The initial model expects that the rank of each keyword varies each week [15]. Given that we use the rank number of Google that we considered as fixed over time, the \(Rank\) variable only depends on the keyword.

  4. Note that the requirements listed in the first row of Table 2 are all optional requirements. See Sect. 6 in which a short comment is made about requirements capturing stakeholders’ preferences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PReCISE Research Center, University of Namur, 8 Rempart de la Vierge, 5000 , Namur, Belgium

    Bertrand Verlaine, Ivan J. Jureta & Stéphane Faulkner

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  1. Bertrand Verlaine
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  2. Ivan J. Jureta
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  3. Stéphane Faulkner
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Correspondence to Bertrand Verlaine.

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Verlaine, B., Jureta, I.J. & Faulkner, S. Optima: a domain-specific model for prioritization and conflicts management in requirements engineering for services intermediaries. SOCA 8, 175–190 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-013-0151-5

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