Using i* in requirements projects: some experiences and lessons

The i* framework has been available in research communities for more than ten years, but it has not been applied widely in industrial requirements projects. This is despite undoubted strengths, which include a simple but formal and stable semantics, a graphical modeling notation that is simple to use, models that are amenable to computational analysis, and applicability in both agent-oriented and goal-oriented requirements methods. Furthermore, i*’s capabilities to bridge the gap between organizational, sociotechnical, and software systems, by modeling goal-based dependencies between organization, work role, and software actors, make it increasingly important in a world in which we depend on computers in many aspects of our everyday lives. Based on these strengths, we sought to integrate the i* framework into new requirements processes rolled out as part of our transfer of requirements knowledge from research to practice. This chapter reports three major industrial projects in which we have applied the i* approach to specify complex sociotechnical systems. It outlines the rationale for using i* in these projects, how i* was integrated with other requirements modeling and specification techniques, and what happened as a result of applying i*. The chapter ends with ten lessons that we learned about using i* effectively in industrial projects, and the benefits that can be gained from its effective use. We believe that these lessons have broader implications for the uptake of requirements modeling techniques.