KAOS, is a goal-oriented software requirements capturing approach in requirements engineering. It is a specific Goal modeling method; another is i*. It allows for requirements to be calculated from goal diagrams.[1] KAOS stands for Knowledge Acquisition in automated specification[2] or Keep All Objectives Satisfied.[3]
The University of Oregon and the University of Louvain (Belgium) designed the KAOS methodology in 1990 by Axel van Lamsweerde and others.[4] It is taught worldwide at the university level[5] for capturing software requirements.
There is lack of evidence that KAOS is used in the industry[6] and as of February 2023, the only tool supporting it is Objectiver, written by the same group[7] behind the KAOS methodology, with the latest release 3.0c47 dated at March 9th, 2012.[8]