A Traceability-based Method to Support Conceptual Model Evolution

Abstract

Renewing software systems is one of the most cost-effective ways to protect software investment, which saves time, money and ensures uninter- rupted access to technical support and product upgrades. There are several mo- tivations to promote investment and scientific effort for specifying systems by means of conceptual models and supporting its evolution. As an example, the software engineering community is addressing solutions for supporting model traceability, continuous improvement of business process, organisational reen- gineering, information system maintenance, etc. Model-driven techniques have been developed in order to analyse systems raising the abstraction level of its specification. However, a support for conceptual model evolution by means of model-driven techniques is still needed. This thesis proposes a traceability- based method that involves model-driven capabilities for designing and provid- ing guidelines, techniques, and tools to support conceptual model evolution. The main idea is to support information system analysts in the tasks related to: justify why the conceptual models have evolved, report and specify what ele- ments have evolved, and guide how to carry out evolution in certain predefined organisational contexts. We plan to apply our method to guide the evolution of an E-shopping software. This way, we also provide mechanism to facilitate in- dustrial adoption.