Understandability of goal concepts by requirements engineering experts

Abstract

ARMOR is a graphical language for modeling business goals and enterprise architectures. In previous work we have identified problems with understandability of goal-oriented concepts for practicing enterprise architects. In this paper we replicate the earlier quasi-experiments with experts in requirements engineering, to see if similar problems arise. We found that fewer mistakes were made in this replication than were made in the previous experiment with practitioners, but that the types of mistakes made in all the concepts were similar to the mistakes made in our previous experiments with enterprise architects. The stakeholder concept was used perfectly by our sample, but the goal decomposition relation was not understood. The subjects provided explanations for understandability problems that are similar to our previous hypothesized explanations. By replicating some of our earlier results, this paper provides additional support for the generalizability of our earlier results.