Abstract

This tutorial has two main goals. The first is to present an intentional strategic actors approach for modeling and analysing business and software ecosystems using the i* framework. As a secondary goal required by the first, we present the i* framework: its history and recent developments, its modeling constructs and analysis techniques. The tutorial thus covers foundations for i* modeling, as well as a fresh application perspective from an emerging area in information systems engineering.

These two main goals are decomposed into the following concrete objectives:

• Introducing the concepts of business ecosystem and software ecosystem.
• Exploring the link between software and business ecosystem models.
• Providing one example of model-based ecosystem analysis, namely risk analy-sis.
• Understanding the role of i* as a framework for strategic modeling and analysis.
• Learning the constructs of the i* core language.
• Being introduced to the portfolio of existing analysis techniques applied to i* models.
• Acquiring skills in the use of i* for modeling business and software ecosystems in general.
• Going deeper in the details of one particular type of ecosystems, namely open source software (OSS) business and software ecosystems.

The tutorial is organized into five main sections:

• Modeling and analyzing business and software ecosystems - challenges and approaches
• Overview of i* modeling language
• The i* SD and SR models
• Presentation of model analysis and reasoning techniques
• Ecosystem modelling and analysis with i*

The intended audience for the tutorial are researchers, practitioners, and vendors interested in describing, modelling, and reasoning about business and system goals during the earlier stages of the systems development process. Given its introductory nature, MSc and PhD students may particularly benefit from the tutorial. No previous knowledge is required for attendance.

CV

Xavier Franch is Associate Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. His research interests are in the areas of information systems engineering, software engineering and service engineering, with focus on requirements engineering. He has given invited talks and tutorials in venues like RCIS'12 (keynote "The i* Framework: The Way Ahead"), ICSE'14, ICSE'13, RE'13, RCIS'13 and RE'04. In relation to CAiSE, he served as Program Chair in 2012 and Workshop Chair in 2008 and 2013. Other positions include: Program Chair at ICSOC'14, REFSQ'11 and ICCBSS'06; General Chair at RE'08 and FiCloud'14; Doctoral Symposium chair at RCIS'13. He is member of the Editorial Boards of IST and IJISMD. He is coordinator of the FP7 RISCOSS project on Managing Risks and Costs in OSS Adoption.

Angelo Susi is a research scientist in the Software Engineering group at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy. He participated in the organization committee of several conferences, such as SSBSE '12 (General Chair), RE '11 (Local and Financial chair) and in program committees of international conferences and workshops (such as AAMAS, ICSOC and SSBSE). He also served as reviewer for several Journals such as REJ, IST, JSS.

Eric S. K. Yu is Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of information systems modeling and design, requirements engineering, knowledge management, and software engineering. Books he has co-authored or co-edited include: Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering (MIT Press, 2011); Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications (Springer, 2009); and Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering (Springer, 2000). He is an associate editor for the Int. Journal of Information Systems Modeling and Design, and serves on the editorial boards of the Int. J. of Agent Oriented Software Engineering, IET Software, and the Journal of Data Semantics. He is co-editor for the MIT Press book series on Information Systems. He was Program Co-chair for the Int. Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER'08, ER'14).