Changing attitudes towards the generation of architectural models

Architectural design is an important activity, but the understanding of how it is related to requirements modeling is rather limited. It is worth noting that goal orientation is an increasingly recognized paradigm for eliciting, modeling, specifying, and analyzing software requirements. However, it is not clear how goal models are related to architectural models. In this paper we present an approach based on model transformations to derive architectural structural specifications from system goals. The source and target languages are respectively the i* (iStar) modeling language and the Acme architectural description language. A real case study is used to show the feasibility of our approach.

► A model transformation approach to derive architectural models from system goals. ► Horizontal and vertical rules transform i* models into architectural specifications. ► The approach is evaluated using a suite of metrics applied to a real case study. ► Architectural models obtained present better modularity results than ad hoc approach.