Domain modelling with hierarchies of alternative viewpoints

It is shown how domain modelling can be used within requirements engineering to reveal the conceptual models used by the participants, and relate these to one another. Existing elicitation techniques used in AI adopt a purely cognitive stance, in that they model a single problem-cognitive stance, and ignore the social and organizational context. A framework for representing alternative, conflicting viewpoints in a single domain model is described. The framework is based on the development of a hierarchy of viewpoint descriptions, where lower levels of the hierarchy contain the conflicts. The hierarchies can be viewed in a number of ways, and allow the participants to develop an understanding of each other's perspective. The framework is supported by a set of tools for developing and manipulating these hierarchies.<>