Eliciting and capturing business goals to inform a product line's business case and architecture

Abstract

Business goals constitute an important kind of knowledge for a software product line. They inform the product line's business case and they inform its architecture and quality attribute requirements. This paper establishes the connection between business goals and a product line's business case and architecture. It then presents a set of common business goal categories, gleaned from a systematic search of the business literature that can be used to elicit an organization's business goals from key stakeholders. Finally, it presents a well-defined method, which we have tried out in practice, for eliciting and capturing business goals and tying them to quality attribute requirements. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.