A Framework for Combining Problem Frames and Goal Models to Support Context Analysis during Requirements Engineering

Quality requirements, like security requirements, are difficult to elicit, especially if they cross multiple domains. Understanding these domains is an important issue in the requirements engineering process for the corresponding systems. Well-known requirements engineering approaches, such as goal-oriented techniques provide a good starting point in capturing security requirements in the form of soft-goals in the early stage of the software engineering process. However, such approaches are not sufficient for context and problem analysis. On the other hand, the context and problem modeling approaches like e.g., problem frames, do not address the system goals. Integrating the relevant context knowledge into goal models is a promising approach to address the mutual limitations. In this paper, we propose a framework for combining goal models and problem frames. The framework makes it possible to document the goals of the system together with the corresponding knowledge of the system’s context. Furthermore, it supports the process of refining (soft-) goals right up to the elicitation of corresponding security requirements. To show the applicability of our approach, we illustrate its application on a real-life case study concerning Smart Grids.