Model-Based Development with Distributed Cognition

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) allows a system to be defined using a series of models. It can refine higher level models into lower level models using model transformations, thereby automating the building of a concrete model and the software development process. This is particularly useful for Requirements Engineering since MDE can bridge the gap between early requirements models, late requirements models, and architectural models. However, requirements elicitation techniques have received little attention in terms of MDE. A major reason is the lack of a formal modelling language for some of these techniques. The definition of a metamodel is an essential step for the specification of a formal modeling language, which is a key pre-requisite for Model Driven Engineering (MDE). We introduce a metamodel for Distributed Cognition, a well-known requirements elicitation technique, using the key concepts present in the framework's literature with the aim to integrate Distributed Cognition into MDE. Furthermore, we report on a preliminary case study on a software XP team to validate our metamodel.