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In a previous work, our research group GESSI has proposed the construction of a taxonomy for classifying COTS components by means of characterization attributes to arrange domains which COTS components belong to, and also grouping these domains into categories [4]. In this report we present our first applicability study of GBRAM (Goal Based-Requirements Analysis Method) as a goal-based reasoning method for the construction of taxonomies of COTS components; more concretely for exploring the “characterization attributes” that are used to browse the taxonomy through an example: the context of the Application Development Tools. We illustrate the main aspects of customizing GBRAM to this objective and remark the methodological aspect we want to achieve in our future work: to propose guidelines for the construction of any taxonomy of COTS components.

Software package selection plays a crucial role in the deployment of software systems. One of its main current problems is how to deal with the vast amount of unstructured, incomplete, evolvable and widespread information that highly increases the risks of taking a wrong decision. It could be said that nowadays there are not satisfactory solutions to that problem. In this paper, we propose an approach to systematically tackle these information quality problems by stating a reference model embracing quality indicators that facilitate the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis and reuse of information in a quality assurance environment. We illustrate it with a scenario of use that shows how this reference model may be used to support software package selection decision-making.

The inherent complexity of business goal-models is a challenge for organizations that has to analyze and maintaining them. Several approaches are developed to reduce the complexity into manageable limits, either by providing support to the modularization or designing metrics to monitor the complexity levels. These approaches are designed to identify an unusual complexity comparing it among models. In the present work, we expose two approaches based on structural characteristics of goal-model, which do not require these comparisons. The first one ranksthe importance of goalsto identify a manageable set of them that can be considered as a priority; the second one modularizes the model to reduce the effort to understand, analyze and maintain the model.