Modelling Goal Dependencies and Domain Model Together

Abstract

Several actors such as human, organization, software applications and hardware units perform our daily activities such as medical care, entertainment and so on. We call each daily activity a socio-technical system (STS), and we also call actors except human and organizations Machines. Human and organizations in an STS become better than ever when new Machines are introduced into the STS and they are beneficial to human and organizations. Although modelling goal dependencies in such a STS contributes to identifying beneficial Machines because such a dependency can represent an actor asks some Machine to achieve his own goal. It is however not easy for modelers to describe a correct dependency. We thus proposed and exemplified an extended modelling notation called Goal Dependency Model with Objects (GDMO) based on strategic dependency (SD) in i*. In GDMO, objects related to a goal in an SD are explicitly specified. Modelers can determine an actor has the right to want the goal to be achieved because relationships between the actor and the objects such as ownership clarify the right. They can also determine another actor has the ability to achieve the goal. In addition, relationships among objects, i.e. a domain model, can suggest missing SDs, and the boundary of an STS can be determined without omission.