Formal refinement patterns for goal-driven requirements elaboration

Abstract

An approach to goal refinement and operationalization aimed at providing constructive formal support while hiding the underlying mathematics is presented. The principle is to use generic refinement patterns from a library structured according to strengthening/weakening relationships among patterns. The patterns are once for all proven correct and complete used in guiding the refinement process or in pointing out missing elements in a refinement. The cost inherent to the use of a formal method is reduced significantly. The tactics for requirements engineer in grounding pattern selection on semantic criteria are proposed.