15th IEEE International
Requirements Engineering
Conference

October 15-19th, 2007
Delhi, India

Agent Oriented Information Systems  8th International Bi-conference AOIS Workshop, 2006

 

Modelling Your System Goals: the i* Approach A One-Day Symposium at City University, London, 20 April 2005, and A Two-Day Research Workshop, University College London, 21-22 April 2005 British Computer Society Requirements Engineering Specialist Group

    

          .....more events of interest...

• Most software systems are hard to maintain and evolve.
• Most software is hard to reuse.
• Most software systems are hard to interoperate with other systems.
• Many software systems do not meet user needs, especially as the needs change.

Software development is a knowledge-intensive activity.  Some of the most important knowledge involved in constructing and maintaining software include:

• why is this operation / data structure needed or used? (intents and motivations)
• what am I trying to achieve here?  why am I trying to achieve this? (goals and reasons)
• what are the possible designs, and why choose one over another? (alternatives and choices)
• what is the basis for making this design decision? (beliefs and assumptions)

All of these are part and parcel of everyday software work.  Yet, existing representations hardly support these intentional processes and relationships.  Non-intentional representations that are in common use today are appropriate for recording the results of software work, but not the process or the reasoning behind them.  My contention is that this missing knowledge contributes in large part to the difficulty in understanding, evolving, and reusing software, and in making them interoperate. In fact, the product of software work should include not just executable code, and not just designs and specifications and requirements expressed in non-intentional terms, but also the rich interconnected web of intentional relationships.

Using Intentional Relationships to Link Business Requirements to Design to Execution and Monitoring

In our research, we are using intentional relationships to link representations of business requirements, architectural design, and run-time operations. The main relationships are goal refinement and means-ends relationships and argumentation (beliefs and assumptions).  These intentional relationships capture and support the reasoning process for deriving execution-level processes from architectural designs, which in turn are derived from business requirements. The use of intentional concepts provide guidance and support during the forward engineering process.  They also provide the key linkages needed for supporting evolution. Run-time operations are monitored against requirements.

Intentional Relationships Among Agents

Intentional modelling needs to characterize what an agent wants, and how these wants are met by the abilities of other agents.  If wants and abilities do not match up, there needs to be adjustments on either or both sides.  This is done by going up or down the means-ends and task-decomposition structures of agents and re-distributing responsibilities among agents. The strategic implications of various alternative re-structuring of intentional dependencies among agents need to be analyzed. This is an important step during requirements analysis.  Much of Requirement Engineering research focuses on requirements specification of behaviour rather than on high-level strategic requirements.

Putting Intentionality into Software Architecture

We believe that software should be characterized as intentional structures.  Current conceptions of software architecture view architectural units or components as behavioural units which interact with each other through messages, data and control flow, etc.  This characterization omits important aspects which are at the intentional level of description.  We would like to view software components as having wants and abilities, and depending on each other in order to achieve goals.
 

Research Issues

Given the above overall philosophy and objectives, there are specific research questions to be addressed.  An immediate challenge is the large amounts of knowledge that needs to be explicitly represented and managed.  Since making knowledge explicit has both benefits and costs, these need to be balanced. Research questions include:

• What kinds of knowledge do we need?  What should the knowledge be about? What are the appropriate ontological concepts?
• How do we represent and organize the knowledge?  What abstraction mechanisms and structuring dimensions are needed?  What are their semantics and computational properties?
• How can we exploit the knowledge?  What analysis techniques can be devised?  What questions/queries should be answerable?
• How do we construct new knowledge structures from existing ones?

More generally, we are dealing with the management of complex knowledge products and processes -- supporting the construction, maintenance, exploitation, and evolution of knowledge artifacts. The software development setting is but one example of complex knowledge-intensive work settings.  See Knowledge Management Lab.

The intentional paradigm is being applied to several projects.  See Research Projects.
 

Research Areas

My research centres around the concept of strategic agents. More specifically, my research goal is to develop techniques for modelling, analyzing, and redesigning relationships among intentional, strategic actors. Application areas are outlined below. These include information systems analysis and design, requirements engineering, software engineering, business modelling and redesign, and knowledge management.
 

Information Systems Analysis and Design

"Structured techniques" were introduced in the 1970's and are still predominant today in information systems analysis and design. Object-oriented approaches are rapidly gaining ground. My research objective is to develop an "agent-oriented" approach to systems analysis and design that focuses on the intentional, strategic character of organization actors. Such an approach would provide a better match for the increasingly flat, networked organizations of today and for the emerging agent-oriented computing paradigm.

References:  [ER94] [COOCS95]
Projects:  CITO/Mitel
 

Requirements Engineering

Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering
As software technologies advance, attention is increasingly being focused on the early phases of system development. Getting the requirements right remains one of the foremost challenges in software engineering. Requirements engineering is now firmly established as a research area with its own conferences (ISRE, ICRE) and a journal (REj). Models and languages, tools and methodologies are being developed. My primary interest in this area is to develop models and techniques for helping understand the organizational context in which systems function, and for reasoning about such contexts. Such understanding is needed to develop systems that address real needs, and that can evolve to meet changing needs.

References:  [RE 97] [WIj01] [REFSQ97] [WICSA99] [RE93]
Projects:   CITO

Non-Functional Requirements
The approach taken partly draws on a framework for dealing with non-functional (or quality) requirements. Besides providing desired functionality, a system needs to meet non-functional requirements such as accuracy, security, performance, costs, and so forth. The ``NFR framework'' treats non-functional requirements as goals that need to be addressed systematically and traded off amongst each other during the design process.

References:  [ICSQ94] [RE95] [REj97] [CACM99] [WICSA99] [NFRbook] [REFSQ00]
Projects:   CITO/Mitel , IRIS/IBM
 

Software Engineering

Software Processes and Organizations
Software engineering is concerned with the methodical, systematic production of quality software. Despite advances in technology, successful software engineering still relies heavily on human efforts. To benefit from technical advances, software engineering organizations need to continuously redesign themselves appropriately. For example, switching to object-orientation, adopting client/server, promoting software reuse all require substantial organizational changes.

Software processes (e.g., software development processes, software maintenance processes, etc.) have received considerable attention in the software engineering field in the past decade. Various modelling schemes have been proposed, mostly as basis for automating or providing technological support to software engineering activities. My interest here is to use organization modelling techniques to better understand the implications of various software technologies (e.g., OOT, C/S, iCASE, groupware, reuse, Java,... ) for software organizations, and how these organizations and their processes can be designed to better take advantage of these technological advances..

References:   [ICSE 94]. See also [Briand 95].

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
A more ambitious approach to incorporating agent-orientation into software engineering is being pursued in the following project.
Projects:   NSERC
 

Systems Architectures and Enterprise Architectures

Cooperative Information Systems

The premise behind the research thrust we call ``Cooperative Information Systems'' is that considerable support can be provided to help deal with cooperation and to manage change, for example, by offering additional system components specializing in these tasks. This area draws on and links a number of research areas, including systems integration, repositories and CASE, HCI, CSCW, business processes and workflows, organizational computing, requirements engineering, and others. My interest in this area is to further explore and charaterize the various notions of and mechanisms for cooperation, and for dealing with change.

References:  [CoopIS Manifesto] [CoopIS 95] [CoopIS bk] [CACM98]
Projects:   EU-Canada

Business and Enterprise Modelling, Organizational Architectures
Business processes are key to the operation of most organizations. A thorough understanding of the business processes of an organization is a necessary prerequisite for developing effective IT support for those processes. Modelling (or ``mapping'') techniques are widely used to document and to help explain, analyze and redesign processes. The radical ``reengineering'' of business processes highlighted the need for appropriate modelling techniques. Today, Internet technologies and e-commerce are leading to fundamental changes in business structures.  Traditional techniques that have been borrowed from systems analysis and design are ill-equipped to deal with these changes.  My interest in this area is to develop and introduce techniques that allow the strategic interests of various stakeholders and actors to be considered when searching for innovative process solutions and business configurations.

References:  [IEEE Expert96] [HICSS94] [COOCS93] [ICEIMT97] [IFAC99] [ER01]
Projects:   BUL-IP
 

Agent-Oriented Systems and Methodologies

When systems are no longer designed from scratch under a unified grand scheme, the traditional notion of architecture which parcels out functionality to components according to a single coherent set of principles (e.g., flexibility, reliability, performance, reuse, etc.) is no longer adequate. System components are increasingly being viewed as (relatively) autonomous agents who request services from each other. Relationships among components are no longer adequately described by syntactic and semantic characterizations of interfaces and interconnections. One component may seek particular performance and reliability characteristics on specific functionalities from the components that it uses. These latter components may in turn depend on others for a different set of characteristics on other functionalities. System components may be organized via market mechanisms or longer-term relationships, and may involve reward structures (e.g., payments, licensing, etc.)  This perspective and approach complements the rapidly emerging agent-oriented software technologies (at the implementation level).

The architecture of such systems need to be described at the intentional level, so as to characterize the wants and abilities of components, and to analyze opportunities and vulnerabilities. Intentional architectural descriptions fit well with agent-oriented characterizations of enterprise. This enables systems design to be treated as part of enterprise design. My research objective here is to adapt strategic actor relationships modelling to the system architecture domain.

References:  [IWASS95] [WCSA98] [WICSA99] [CAiSE99] [Trust00] [TWIST00] [aois.org] [STRAW01-R2A] [STRAW01-Evolv] [WIj01]
Projects:   CITO
 

Conceptual Modelling  and  Knowledge Management

The common thread through my various research interests is the need to manage complex knowledge structures.  We develop conceptual modelling techniques to model real world phenomena, to manage large bodies of knowledge, and to support analysis and reasoning. The techniques aim to provide a sufficiently rich characterization of a domain ("ontologies"), drawing on knowledge representation techniques in artificial intelligence to provide reasoning support.

The i* framework developed in my PhD dissertation focuses on the modelling of intentional, strategic actor relationships as a way of enriching models of organizations and organizational processes. These are being refined, extended, and applied to the various application areas. I would also like to explore new areas of applications, such as policy analysis, strategic business redesign, and negotiation support.

References:   [ASE97] [ASIS99]

Projects:   BUL-KMLab, BUL-IP

References:  [TrustCh01] [SREIS02-Sec] [SREIS02-Priv] [Trust02]

Post-Doctoral Fellows - You will hold key responsibilities in a research project team.  Good research and writing skills are required.  Excellent vehicle for launching a research career.  Competitive salaries.  Teaching duties pay extra.

Ph.D. Students - You should have an excellent academic record, a Master's degree from a recognized programme, and deep interest and commitment in pursuing research.  Writing skills are important.

Masters Students - The MISt degree offers professional education in the study of information in a multidisciplinary context.  The Information Systems stream offers the study of computer-based information systems.
Qualified MISt students may undertake a Research Project in lieu of 2 to 4 half-courses.  For students interested in specialized interest areas of faculty members, Reading Courses are sometimes offered.

In my capacity as a cross-appointed Faculty Member at the Department of Computer Science, I also supervise:

Ph.D. Students in Computer Science

M. Sc. Students in Computer Science

Bachelors Thesis in Engineering Science

I will be happy to talk with you if you find my research areas to be of interest.

Summer Studentships
We typically have openings for several summer positions in research projects for senior undergrads.  You should have high academic standing.  This is an excellent opportunity for learning about the research environment and graduate school while being gainfully employed.  Part-time employment during the school year may also be available.  Masters students interested in contributing to our research projects are also welcome.  Please send me your resume by e-mail to register your interest.  Having some of the following as background would be helpful but not essential:

• programming experience - Java/JFC, C/C++; web interfaces, Windows/PC platforms, Unix/X-windows
• real-world work experience
• systems analysis and design, information modelling
• AI, knowledge-based systems, knowledge representation and reasoning, AI programming
• software engineering work experience
• management and organization theories

Here are some specific projects/topics that are of direct interest to me:

• modelling and reasoning about trust, security, and privacy.
• agent-oriented approach to software engineering
• requirements-centric approach to software development
• goal- and agent-oriented support for software engineering - analysis techniques and tools
• requirements-driven software reengineering
• cataloguing of design knowledge
• design patterns, software architecture, and non-functional requirements
• intellectral property management using goal and agent modelling and analysis
• strategic business analysis for executive information portals
• knowledge mapping and knowledge management

Post-Doctoral Research Associates

Markus Strohmaier
Luiz Marcio Cysneiros
Linda Lin Liu
Zhiming Cai

• Knowledge Management Lab, University of Toronto
• Steve Easterbrook Computer Science, University of Toronto
  
• Yves Lesperance York University
• Lawrence Chung University of Texas, Dallas
• Alex Borgida Rutgers University
• European collaboration

• NSERC
• CITO
• IRIS
• Mitel Corp.
• IBM
• Bell University Labs  Bell Canada  
  

• Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering
  NSERC Discovery Grant (2004-2009)
• Strategic Requirements Analysis for Internet Services
  NSERC Collaborative Research & Development Grant (2005-2008)
  
• Strategic Requirements Analysis for Kids Help Phone
  Bell University Labs Research Grant (2003-2005)
  Industry partner:  Kids Help Phone, Bell Canada
  
• Security and Privacy for Internet Services
  Bell University Labs Research Grant (2003-2005)
  Industry partner:  Bell Canada
  
• Strategic Knowledge Modelling for Patent Portfolio Management
Bell University Labs Research Project (2000-2001)

• University of Toronto Knowledge Management Laboratory
Bell University Labs (2001-2005)

• Goal and Agent Modelling Support for Software Engineering
CITO Research Project (2000-2002)
Industry partner:  Mitel Corp.

• Agent-Oriented Software Development
CITO Research Project (2000-2002)

• Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
NSERC Individual Research Grant (2000-2004)

• Reengineering Software Systems for Network-Centric Computing
IRIS-3 Reseach Project (1998-2002)
Industry partner:  IBM

• Agent-Oriented Software Architectures:  Models and Analysis Tools
CITO Research Project (1998-2000)
Industry partner:  Mitel Corp.  

• Business Process Models and Tools
ITRC Research Project (1995-1998)
• Cooperative Information Systems
EU-Canada Collaboration project (1995-1998)

• Organization Modelling for Information Systems
NSERC Individual Research Grant (1996-2000)

• [TEAR06]  E. Yu, M. Strohmaier, X. Deng
  Exploring Intentional Modeling and Analysis for Enterprise Architecture (pdf)
  Proceedings of the Workshop on Trends in Enterprise Architecture Research (TEAR'06), at the Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC) Hong Kong, October 2006.
    
  
• [ISSEch06]  E. Yu, L. Liu, J. Mylopoulos
  A Social Ontology for Integrating Security and Software Engineering
  In: Integrating Security and Software Engineering. H. Mouratidis, P. Giorgini, eds. Idea Group Publishing.  pp. 70-109
   
  
• [PST06]  J. Horkoff, E. Yu, L. Liu
  Analyzing Trust in Technology Strategies
  Proc. Int. Conf. on Privacy, Security, and Trust (PST'06), Toronto, Canada, Oct 30— Nov 1, 2006
    
  
• [RE06]  Sotirios Liaskos, Alexei Lapouchnian, Yijun Yu, Eric Yu, John Mylopoulos
  On Goal-based Variability Acquisition and Analysis (pdf)
  14th IEEE Int. Requirements Eng. Conf. (RE'06) Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Sept 11-15, 2006.
   
  
• [SOCCER06]  L. Liu, C. Chi, Z. Jin, E. Yu
  Strategic Capability Modelling of Services.  (pdf)
  In: Proc. Workshop on Service-Oriented Computing: Consequences for Engineering Requirements (SOCCER'06) L. Baresi, X. Franch, N. Maiden, eds. at the 14th IEEE Int. Requirements Eng. Conf. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Sept 11-15, 2006.
    
  
• [HICSS07]  M. Strohmaier, E. Yu, J. Horkoff, J. Aranda, S. Easterbrook
  Analyzing Knowledge Transfer Effectiveness – An Agent-Oriented Modeling Approach  
  In: Proc. Hawaii Int. Conf. Systems Science, 2007.
    
  
• [CASCON06]  M. Strohmaier, E. Yu
  Towards Autonomic Workflow Management Systems (pdf)
  In: Proc. CASCON 06. Toronto, Canada, Oct 16-19, 2006.
    
  
• [IEEEsw06]  J. Gordijn, E. Yu, B. van der Raadt
  e-Service Design Using i* and e3value Modeling (pdf)
  IEEE Software, May/June 2006 (Vol. 23, No. 3)  pp. 26-33.
    
  
• [COMPSAC06]  L. Liu, E. Yu, J. Mylopoulos
  Security Design Based on Social Modelling 
  30th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Chicago, USA, Sept 17-21, 2006.
    
  
• [APWeb06]  L. Liu, E. Yu
  Modeling Identity Management Architecture within a Social Setting 
  In: X. Zhou et al. (Eds.): Frontiers of WWW Research and Development - Proceedings of the 8th Asia Pacific Web Conference (APWeb 2006), LNCS 3841, 2006. pp. 917-922.
    
• [RE05khp]  S. Easterbrook, E. Yu, J. Aranda, J. Horkoff, M. Leica, R. Qadir, Y. Fan
  Do Viewpoints Lead to Better Conceptual Models?: An Exploratory Case Study (pdf)
  13th IEEE Int. Conf. on Requirements Engineering, Paris, Sept 2005. pp. 199-208.
    
  
• [RE05e3v]  B. van der Raadt, J. Gordijn, E. Yu
  Exploring Web Services from a Business Value Perspective (pdf)
  13th IEEE Int. Conf. on Requirements Engineering, Paris, Sept 2005. pp. 53-62.
    
  
• [CAiSE05]  J.C.S.P. Leite, Y. Yu, L. Liu, E.S.K. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
  Quality-based Software Reuse  (pdf)
  Conf. Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'05), June 2005. pp. 535-550
    
  
• [PHIC04]  E. Yu
  Information Systems (in the Internet Age).  (pdf)
  In: Practical Handbook of Internet Computing, M.P. Singh (ed.) CRC Press 2004. pp. 33-1 - 33-19
    
  
• [DKEj05] B. Hui and E. Yu.
  Extracting Conceptual Relationships from Specialized Documents
  Data and Knowledge Engineering. 54(1) 2005. pp 29-55 (Science Direct)
   
  
• [ER04] L. Liu, E. Yu
  Intentional Modeling to Support Identity Management
  23rd Int. Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2004). Shanghai, China, November, 2004. LNCS 3288 Springer. pp. 555-566 (pdf)
    
  
• [ISj04] L. Liu, E. Yu
  Designing Information Systems in Social Context: A Goal and Scenario Modelling Approach (pdf)
  Information Systems, Elservier. 29(2) 2004. pp 187-203.
  
  
• [RE03]  L. Liu, E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
Security and Privacy Requirements Analysis within a Social Setting
International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’03), Monterey, California, September 2003. pp. 151-161 (draft)
  

• [AMKM03]  Alessandra Molani, Anna Perini, Eric Yu, Paolo Bresciani
Analysing the Requirements for Knowledge Management using Intentional Analysis
AAAI Spring Symposium on Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management (AMKM-03) Stanford University, March 24-26, 2003.
 
• [KAISj04]  Igor Jurisica, John Mylopoulos, and Eric Yu
Ontologies for Knowledge Management: An Information Systems Perspective (pdf)
Knowledge and Information Systems. Springer. 6(4) July 2004. pp. 380-401
 
• [SELMASch03] L.M. Cysneiros and E. Yu.
Requirements Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems
Book chapter in Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems – Research Issues and Practical Applications.  A. Garcia, C. Lucena, F. Zambonelli, A. Omicini and J. Castro (eds.) LNCS 2603, Springer Verlag. 2003.  (revised and extended version of  [SELMAS02])
 
• [Trust-ch03]   E. Yu and L.M. Cysneiros.
Designing for Privacy in a Multi-Agent World
Book chapter in Trust, Reputation and Security: Theories and Practice. R. Falcone, S. Barber, L. Korba and M. Singh (eds.) LNAI 2631, Springer-Verlag.  2003.  (revised and extended version of  [Trust02])
 
• [REPersp-ch03]   L.M. Cysneiros and E. Yu.
Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation
Book chapter in Perspectives on Software Requirements. Julio Leite and Jorge Doorn, (eds.) Kluwer Academic Publishers.  2004. pp. 115-138.
 
• [Trace02]   D. Gross and E. Yu.
Dealing with system qualities during design and composition of aspects and modules: an agent and goal-oriented approach
First International Workshop on Traceability in Emerging Forms of Software Engineering, Automated Software Engineering Conference, Edinburgh, U.K., October 2002. pp. 1-8.
 
• [ER02]  B. Hui, E. Yu
Extracting Conceptual Relationships from Specialized Documents
21th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER-2002). Tampere, Finland, October 7-11, 2002. LNCS 2503 Springer Verlag. pp. 232-246. (ut)
 
• [SREIS02-Priv]  E. Yu, L. Cysneiros
Designing for Privacy and Other Competing Requirements
2nd Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security (SREIS’02). Raleigh, North Carolina, October 16, 2002. (pdf)
 
• [SREIS02-Sec]  L. Liu, E. Yu, J. Mylopoulos
Analyzing Security Requirements as Relationships Among Strategic Actors
2nd Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security (SREIS’02). Raleigh, North Carolina, October 16, 2002. (pdf)
 
• [Trust02]  E. Yu, L.M. Cysneiros
Designing for Privacy in the Presence of Other Requirements
4th Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies. (Trust2001). Bologna, Italy. July 2002. (to appear)
 
• [AOIS02]  E. Yu, L.M. Cysneiros
Agent-Oriented Methodologies – Towards A Challenge Exemplar   (html) (pdf)
4th International Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS’02). Toronto. May 27-28, 2002.
 
• [SELMAS02]  E. Yu, L.M. Cysneiros
Large-Scale Agent Systems: A World Modelling Perspective
Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems, at the International Conference on Software Engineering (SELMAS), Orlando, Florida. May 19, 2002.
 
• [CAiSE02]  L. Liu, E. Yu
Designing Web-Based Systems in Social Context: A Goal and Scenario Based Approach
14th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’02), Toronto, May 27-31, 2002.
LNCS 2348 Springer Verlag. pp. 37-51. (ut)
 
• [AOSE01]  E. Yu
Agent-Oriented Modelling: Software Versus the World  (ps) (pdf)
Agent-Oriented Software Engineering AOSE-2001 Workshop Proceedings.
LNCS 2222.  Springer Verlag.  pp. 206-225.
 
 
• [ER01]  E. Yu, L. Liu, Y. Li
Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships to Support Intellectual Property Management   (pdf submitted)
20th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER-2001). Yokohama, Japan, November 27-30, 2001.
LNCS 2224 Spring Verlag. pp. 164-178.  (ut)
 
• [TrustCh01]  E. Yu, L. Liu
Modelling Trust for System Design Using the i* Strategic Actors Framework
In: Trust in Cyber-Societies - Integrating the Human and Artificial Perspectives.  R. Falcone, M. Singh, Y.H. Tan, eds.
LNAI-2246. Springer Verlag.  2001. pp. 175-194. (ut)
 
• [STRAW01-Evolv]  D. Gross, E. Yu
Evolving System Architecture to Meet Changing Business Goals: an Agent and Goal-Oriented Approach   (pdf)
ICSE-2001 Workshop: From Software Requirements to Architectures (STRAW 2001) May 2001, Toronto, Canada. pp. 13-21.
 
• [STRAW01-R2A]  L. Liu, E. Yu
From Requirements to Architectural Design - Using Goals and Scenarios   (pdf)
ICSE-2001 Workshop: From Software Requirements to Architectures (STRAW 2001) May 2001, Toronto, Canada. pp. 22-30.
 
• [WIj01]   E. Yu
Agent Orientation as a Modelling Paradigm   (pdf)
Wirtschaftsinformatik. 43(2) April 2001. pp. 123-132.
 
• [REj01]  D. Gross, E. Yu
From Non-Functional Requirements to Design through Patterns
Requirements Engineering.  Springer-Verlag. 6(2001) 1: 18-36.
 
• [IEEESoft01]  J. Mylopoulos, L. Chung, H.Q. Wang, S. Liao, E. Yu
`Extending Object-Oriented Analysis to Explore Alternatives'
IEEE Software.  January/February 2001. pp. 2-6.
 
• [TWIST00]  E. Yu
Centralize or Decentralize? A Requirements Engineering Perspective on Internet-Scale Architectures.  (position paper)
The Workshop on Internet-Scale Technologies. University of California Irvine. July 13-14, 2000. (pdf)
 
• [Trust00]  E. Yu, L. Liu
`Modelling Trust in the i* Strategic Actors Framework'
Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies.
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain (at Agents2000), June 3-4, 2000.  (pdf) (ps)
 
• [REFSQ00]  D. Gross, E. Yu
`From Non-Functional Requirements to Design through Patterns'
Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundations for Software Quality (June 5-6, 2000), Stockholm, Sweden.  submitted version. (doc)

[NFRbook]  L. Chung, B.A. Nixon, E. Yu, J. Mylopoulos Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering (Monograph) Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.  472 pp. ISBN 0-7923-8666-3.  Amazon.com    early versions of Ch 2 (ps) (pdf), Ch 3 (ps)

 
• [ASIS99]  I. Jurisica, J. Mylopoulos, E. Yu(ut)
'Using Ontologies for Knowledge Management: An Information Systems Perspective'
Knowledge: Creation, Organization and Use – Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS’99). Oct. 31 - Nov. 4, 1999, Washington, D.C.  pp. 482-296.   (pdf)
 
• [IFAC99]  E. Yu
`Strategic Modelling for Enterprise Integration'
Proceedings of the 14th World Congress of International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC’99), July 5-9, 1999, Beijing, China. pp. 127-132. Permagon, Elsevier Science.
(earlier version pdf) (presentation ppt)
 
• [CAiSE99]  Y. Lespérance, T.G. Kelley, J. Mylopoulos, E. Yu
`Modeling Dynamic Domains with ConGolog'
Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE), June 14-18, 1999, Heidelberg, Germany. LNCS 1626. Springer-Verlag. pp. 365-380.  (ps)
 
• [WICSA99]  L. Chung, D. Gross, E. Yu
`Architectural Design to Meet Stakeholder Requirements' (pdf)
in Software Architecture, Patrick Donohue, ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1999. pp. 545-564.
(TC2 First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA1), 22-24 February 1999, San Antonio, Texas, USA.)
 
• [CACM99]  J. Mylopoulos, L. Chung, E. Yu
`From Object-Oriented to Goal-Oriented Requirements Analysis'
Communications of the ACM, 42(1): 31-37, January 1999.  (acm)
 
• [CACM98]  G. De Michelis, E. Dubois, M. Jarke, F. Matthes, J. Mylopoulos, M. Papazoglou, J. W. Schmidt, C. Woo, E. Yu
`A Three-Faceted View of Information Systems: The Challenge of Change'
Communications of the ACM, 41(12): 64-70, December 1998.   (acm)
 
• [ISKO98]  J. Mylopoulos, I. Jurisica, E. Yu
`Computational Mechanisms for Knowledge Organization'
in: Structures and Relations in Knowledge Organization, Advances in Knowledge Organization, vol 6 (1998). Proceedings of the 5th International ISKO Conference, 25-29August 1998, Lille, France. W.M. el Hadi, J. Maniez, and S.A. Pollitt, eds., Ergon Verlag, 1998. pp. 125-132.
 
• [REFSQ98]  E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
`Why Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering' (html)
Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundations of Software Quality (8-9 June 1998, Pisa, Italy). E. Dubois, A.L. Opdahl, K. Pohl, eds. Presses Universitaires de Namur, 1998. pp. 15-22.
 
• [IWSSD98]  E. Dubois, E. Yu, and M. Petit
`From Early to Late Formal Requirements: a Process Control Case Study'  (pdf) (ps) (iel)
Proc. 9th International Workshop on Software Specification and Design (April 16-18, 1998, Ise-Shima, Japan).  IEEE Computer Society, 1998. pp. 34-42.
 
• [WCSA98]  L. Chung and E. Yu
`Achieving System-Wide Architectural Qualities'   (ps) (pdf)
OMG-DARPA-MCC Workshop on Compositional Software Architectures, Janurary 6-8, 1998, Monterey, California.
 
• [ICEIMT97]  E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
`Modelling Organizational Issues for Enterprise Integration'   (pdf) (ps)
Proceedings of International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modelling Technology, October 28-30, 1997, Turin, Italy.
 
• [REFSQ97] E. Yu
`Why Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering'    (ps) (pdf)
Proceedings of 3rd International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundations for Software Quality (June 16-17, 1997, Barcelona, Catalonia). E. Dubois, A.L. Opdahl, K. Pohl, eds. Presses Universitaires de Namur, 1997.
 
• [Manifesto] G. DeMichelis, E. Dubois, M. Jarke, F. Matthes, J. Mylopoulos, M. Papazoglou, K. Pohl, J. Schmidt, C. Woo, E. Yu
`Cooperative Information Systems: A Manifesto'
in: Cooperative Information Systems: Trends and Directions, M. P. Papazoglou and G. Schlageter (eds), Academic Press, 1997. pp. 315-363.
 
• [RE97] E. Yu
 `Towards Modelling and Reasoning Support for Early-Phase Requirements Engineering'    Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Int. Symp. on Requirements Engineering (RE'97) Jan. 6-8, 1997, Washington D.C., USA. pp. 226-235. (pdf) (ps) (iel)
 
• [ASE97] J. Mylopoulos, A. Borgida, and E. Yu,
`Representing Software Engineering Knowledge'
Automated Software Engineering, Kluwer Academic Publishers, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1997. pp. 291-317. (ut)
 
• [REj97] L. Chung, B. Nixon, and E. Yu,
`Dealing with Change: An Approach Using Non-Functional Requirements'
Requirement Engineering, Springer-Verlag, vol. 1, no. 4, 1997. pp. 238-260.
 
• [IJISAFM96]  Eric S.K. Yu, John Mylopoulus
Using Goals, Rules and Methods to Support Reasoning in Business Process Reengineering
International Journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance, and Management, John Wiley & Sons, 5(1), March 1996. pp. 1-13.  (draft ps)
 
• [IEEEExpert96] E. Yu, J. Mylopoulos and Y. Lespérance
 `AI Models for Business Process Reengineering'
IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems and Their Applications, August 1996, pp. 16-23.
(iel) (early version of this paper in html )
 
• [IJICIS95] E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
From E-R to ‘A-R’ -- Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships for Business Process Reengineering
Int. Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems, vol. 4, no. 2/3, 1995, pp. 125-144.  World Scientific Publishing.  (a revised and extended version of ER'94 paper).
 
 
• [CoopIS95] Eric Yu , Philippe Du Bois , Eric Dubois, and John Mylopoulos
 `From Organization Models to System Requirements -- A ``Cooperating Agents'' Approach'  Proc. 3rd International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems -- CoopIS-95, Vienna (Austria), May 9-12, 1995. pp. 194-204. (pdf) (ps)
A revised version appears in: Cooperative Information Systems: Trends and Directions, M. P. Papazoglou and G. Schlageter (eds), Academic Press, 1997. pp. 293-312.
 
• [COOCS95] Eric S. K. Yu
 `Models for Supporting the Redesign of Organizational Work'
Proceedings, Conf. on Organizational Computing Systems (COOCS'95) August 13-16, 1995, Milpitas, California, USA. pp. 225-236.  (ps) (pdf)  (acm)
 
• [RE95] L. Chung, B.A. Nixon, and E. Yu
 `Using Non-Functional Requirements to Systematically Support Change'
Proc. 1st IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE'95), January 1995, York, England. pp. 132-139.   (ps)  (iel)
 
• [TH95] E. Yu
  Modelling Strategic Relationships for Process Reengineering
  Ph.D. Thesis. Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto. 1995. (google scholar)
  
  
• [WITS94] E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
 'Towards Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships for Information Systems Development -- With Examples from Business Process Reengineering'
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, December 17-18, 1994. pp. 21-28.  (ps)  (pdf)
 
• [ICSQ94] L. Chung, B.A. Nixon and E. Yu,
 'Using Quality Requirements to Systematically Develop Quality Software'
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software Quality, McLean, VA, U.S.A. Oct. 3-5, 1994. (ps) (pdf)
 
• [ER94] Eric S. K. Yu and John Mylopoulos
 `From E-R to ``A-R'' -- Modelling Strategic Actor Relationships for Business Process Reengineering'
in: Entity-Relationship Approach (ER'94) -- Business Modelling and Re-Engineering (Proceedings of 13th Int. Conf. on the Entity-Relationship Approach, Manchester, U.K., December 1994), P. Loucopoulos (Ed.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science no. 881, Springer-Verlag. pp. 548-565.  (ps)  (pdf)
 
• [ICSE94] Eric S. K. Yu and John Mylopoulos
 `Understanding ``Why'' in Software Process Modelling, Analysis, and Design'
Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 16-21, 1994, Sorrento, Italy, pp. 159-168.  (pdf) (ps) (iel)  (acm)
 
• [HICSS94] Eric S. K. Yu and John Mylopoulos
 `Using Goals, Rules, and Methods To Support Reasoning In Business Process Reengineering'  Proceedings of the 27th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, Hawaii, January 1994, Vol. 4, pp. 234-243. (ps) (pdf) (iel)
A revised version appeared in: Int. Journal of Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, special issue on Artificial Intelligence in Business Process Reengineering, 5(1):1-13, January 1996, John Wiley & Sons. (ut)
 
• [COOCS93] E. Yu and J. Mylopoulos
 `An Actor Dependency Model of Organizational Work -- With Application to Business Process Reengineering'
Proc. Conference on Organizational Computing Systems, Nov. 1-4, 1993, Milpitas, Calif., USA, Simon Kaplan, ed., ACM Press, pp. 258-268.  (ps) (pdf) (acm)
 
• [RE93] Eric S.K. Yu
`Modeling Organizations for Information Systems Requirements Engineering'
Proc. 1st IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, January 1993, San Diego, California, USA. pp. 34-41. (iel)

Papers on Non-Functional Requirements may be found in the DKBS ftp directory.  Softgoal modelling and reasoning originated from the NFR framework.  Details may be found in the NFRbook.

See the i*  and  GRL webpages for more details.

• "Strategic Actor Relationships Modelling with i*" (ppt slides part 1, part 2, part 3)

A tutorial given at IRST/University of Trento, Italy, December 2001.
• "A Concept of Agent for Software Development"  (pdf slides)

Invited talk at AOIS @ CAiSE 2001. June 2001.
• "Knowledge, Action, and Systems -- Some emerging foundational issues in Computing ... Can Information Studies Help?" (ppt slides)  Seminar at FIS.  February 2001.
• "From Goal-Oriented to Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering" (ppt slides)

Presented on the occassion of the visit by Prof. Axel van Lamsweerde.  November 2000.
• "Agent Orientation and Information Systems" (ppt slides)

Presentation at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.  July 8, 1999.

• Program committee, 12th IEEE International Joint Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE'04), Kyoto, Japan, 6-10 September 2004. Papers due: Jan. 26
• Program committee, 17th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI-2004), London, Ontario, Canada, May 17-19,2004. Abstracts: Dec. 3, Papers due: Dec. 10
• Program committee, Information Resources Management Association International Conference (IRMA'04), New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, May 23-26, 2004. "Business Process Management and Technologies" track. Papers due: Oct. 3
  
• Program committee, 16th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'04 Riga, Latvia, June 7-11, 2004. Papers due: Nov 30 Workshop proposals: Oct 30.
• Steering Committee, 5th International Bi-conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS2003),
• Melbourne, Australia, July 14-15, 2003 (at AAMAS 2003 ).  
• Chicago, Illinois, October 13, 2003 (at ER'03).  
• Program committee, 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems (SELMAS), (at ICSE 2003, Portland, Oregon), May 19, 2003.
• Program committee, 4th Workshop on Agent-Oriented Sofware Engineering (AOSE'03), (at AAMAS 2003) Melbourne, Australia.
• Program committee, ChiliPLoP 2003 Workshop on Expressiveness of Pattern Languages, Carefree, Arizona. March 11-14, 2003.
• Program committee, 22st International Conference on ConceptualModeling (ER2003), Chicago, USA, October 6-9, 2003.   
• Program committee, IEEE/WIC International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2003) Beijing, China. October 13-17, 2003.  
• Program committee, 11th IEEE International Joint Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE'03), Monterey, California, September 8-12, 2003.
• Program committee, 7th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2003) Helsinki, Finland, August 27-29, 2003.
• Program committee, 2nd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems  (AAMAS 2003), Melbourne, Australia.  July 14-18, 2003. 
• Program committee, 16th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI-2003), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 11-13, 2003. 
• Program committee, 2nd International Conference on Active Media Technology (ICAMT 2003), ChongQing, China.  29-31 May 2003. 
• Program committee, 15th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'03, Velden, Austria, June 16-20, 2003.  
• Program committee, Workshop on Agent-Oriented Methodologies, Seattle, Washington, November 4, 2002 (at OOPSLA'02).  
• Program committee, International Workshop on Time-Constrained Requirements Engineering (TCRE'02), Essen, Germany, September 9, 2002 (at RE'02).
• Co-organizer and co-chair, 4th International Bi-conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS2002),
• Toronto, Canada, May 27-28, 2002 (at CAiSE*02), and
• Bologna, Italy, July 2002 (at AAMAS 2002 ).
• Program committee, First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems  (AAMAS 2002), Bologna, Italy.  July 15-19, 2002.
• Program committee, 10th IEEE International Joint Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE'02), Essen, Germany, September 9-13, 2002.
• Program committee,  Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security (SREIS'02), Raleigh, North Carolina, Oct 14-15, 2002.
• Program committee, 5th Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies, (at AAMAS 2002 , Bologna, Italy).
• Program committee, 3rd Workshop on Agent-Oriented Sofware Engineering (AOSE'02), (at AAMAS 2002 , Bologna, Italy).
• Program committee, 6th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2002) Madrid, Spain, September 18 - 20, 2002.
• Program committee, 1st International Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems (SELMAS), (at ICSE 2002, Buenos Aires, Argentina), May 19, 2002.
• Program committee,  International Conference on Intelligent Information Processing (ICIIP-02), Beijing, China, September 22-25, 2002.
• Program committee, 14th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'02, Toronto, Canada, May 27-31, 2002.
• Program committee, 15th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI-2002), Calgary, Canada, May 27-29, 2002.
• Organizing committee, 21st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER2002), Tampere, Finland, October 7-11, 2002.
• Program committee, Active Media Technology: the Sixth International Computer Science Conference (AMT 2001), Hong Kong, China.  18-20 December 2001 .
• Program committee and Organizing committee, 5th IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE'01), Toronto, Canada, August 27-31, 2001.
• Co-organizer and co-chair, 3rd International Bi-conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS2001),
• Montreal, Canada, May 28, 2001 (at Agents2001), and
• Interlaken, Switzerland, June 4, 2001 (at CAiSE*01).
• Program committee, 4th Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies, Montreal, Canada (at Agents2001 - the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents).
• Program committee, 8th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL-2001), Boston, Massachusetts, July 7-9, 2000 (at  Agents2001).
• Program committee, 7th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ’2001). Stockholm, Sweden. June 5-6, 2000 (at CAiSE*01).
• Program committee, International Workshop on Data Semantics in Web Information Systems (DASWIS 2001), Yokohama, Japan. November 29-30, 2001.
• Program committee, Second Asia-Pacific Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT-2001).  Maebashi TERRSA, Maebashi City, Japan. October 23-26, 2001.
• Program committee, Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, November 15-17, 2000.
• Program committee, 3rd Workshop on Requirements Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 13-14, 2000.
• Co-organizer and co-chair, Second International Bi-conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS2000),
• Stockholm, Sweden, June 5-6, 2000 (at CAiSE*00), and
• Austin, Texas, July 30, 2000 (at AAAI-2000).
• Program committee, 3rd Workshop on Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, June 3-7, 2000 (at Agents2000 - the 4th International Conference on Autonomous Agents).
• Program committee, Workshop on Agent-Oriented Software Management (AOSM), Berlin, Germany, August 21-22, 2000. (at ECAI-2000, the 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
• Program committee, 6th International ISKO Conference (ISKO 6), International Society for Knowledge Organization, Toronto, Canada, July 10-13, 2000.
• Program committee, 7th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL-2000), Boston, Massachusetts, July 7-9, 2000 (at ICMAS 2000).
• Program committee, 6th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ’2000). Stockholm, Sweden. June 5-6, 2000 (at CAiSE*00).
• Program committee, Workshop on Agents in Electronic Commerce, Hong Kong, China, 14 December 1999 (at the 1st Asian-Pacific Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, IAT'99)
• Co-chair, First International Bi-conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems, Seattle, USA, 1 May 1999 (at Agent'99) and Heidelberg, Germany, 14-15 June 1999 (at CAiSE'99).
• Program committee, 12th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE2000, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2000
• Program committee, IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, Limerick, Ireland, June 1999
• Program committee, 11th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE*99, Heidelberg, Germnay, June 1999
• Program committee, 5th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundations of Software Quality REFSQ'99, Heidelberg, Germany, June 1999
• Program committee, Sixth International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, Orlando, Florida, July 1999
• Program committee, Third IFCIS Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS'98), New York, August 1998.
• Program committee, Hawaii Int. Conf. on Systems Sciences, mini-track on Distributed Heterogeneous Informations Systems, January 1998.
• Program committee, IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, January 1997
• Program committee, Great Lakes Information Science Conference, November 1996
• Program committee, IJCAI workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering, August 1995
• Program committee, Conf. on Organizational Computing Systems, August 1995

University of Toronto

Faculty of Information Studies

140 St. George St.

Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G6, CANADA

(416) 978-3107 (416) 971-1399

University of Toronto

Department of Computer Science

40 St. George St.

Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2E4, CANADA

Courier delivery to:  Room 4239

(416) 978-7330 (416) 946-7132      Please visit again soon.

This page last modified on: November 12, 2006

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