On the impact of goals on long-living systems

Abstract

Changes in software systems are inevitable. Addressing future changes in the requirements engineering phase influences the resulting architecture, improves its maintainability and can prolong the lifetime of software architectures. In this paper, structures in goal models are identified and discussed. Such structures are parts in requirements models with a high probability for future changes. Designing a system to support changes is a way towards a longer lifetime. Variable requirements model parts can be handled using adjustable parts in the design. Thus, the better current as well as future variation points can be identified in the requirements model, the better changes can be handled by a system and, consequently, the longer the lifecycle of software architectures could be.