Preconceptual-schema-based representation of KAOS goal diagram

Goal diagram helps in linking stakeholder requirements and expectations to software requirements. In addition, the diagram establishes the actor duties and justifies them the importance of the future software. Despite the usefulness of the goal diagram, the projects for specifying or using it do not link it to the stakeholder discourse. Instead, the goal diagram is manually and subjectively created by the analyst based on the information provided by the stakeholder and any help for conceptualizing the diagram is not provided. Also, some elements, like goals, tasks, and requirements are confused. The above reasons lead us to propose, in this paper, a novel way to represent KAOS goal diagram in the so-called pre-conceptual schemas, which allow a closer approximation to the stakeholder discourse. In doing so, we add new elements to pre-conceptual schemas and we define heuristic rules for linking together the goal diagram elements: stakeholder requirements and goals. Furthermore, we present a lab study for reviewing the obtained results.