Abstract
The new emerging method engineering discipline acknowledges the need for the construction of methods tuned to specific situations of development projects. This raises at least three problems (1) the representation of method fragments in a method base, (2) the formalization of the notion of project situation and, (3) the retrieval of relevant fragments for the project situation at hand. Our contribution to the first two of these problems lies in the definition of a contextual approach which enables us to represent both method knowledge (i.e. the method base contents) and method meta-knowledge (i.e. knowledge about the potential use of method fragments) as pairs of the form <situation, decision>. This emphasizes both engineering decisions and method engineering decisions, their rationale and situations of applicability. We contribute to the third problem by proposing a tight coupling of method knowledge and method meta-knowledge in the method base. This enables the formal description of the context of use of every method fragment and shall facilitate the retrieval of relevant fragments according to the situation of the project under development. The paper presents and exemplifies the method knowledge and method meta-knowledge levels.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arango G (1989), “Domain analysis: from art to engineering discipline”, Proc. 5th Int. Workshop on Software Specification and Design, IEEE Computer Society Press, San Diego
Bubenko J., Rolland C., Loucopoulos P., DeAntonellis V. (1994), “Facilitating ”Fuzzy to Formal“ Requirements Modelling”,IEEE 1st Int. Conference on Requirements Engineering. ICRE’94, pp 154–158
De Antonellis V., Pernici B., Samarati P. (1991) “F-ORM METHOD: A methodology for reusing specifications”, in Object Oriented Approach in Information Systems, Van Assche F., Moulin B., Rolland C. (eds ), North Holland
Franckson M. (1994), “The Euromethod deliverable model and its contribution to the objectves of Euromethod”,Proc. IFIP-TC8 Int. Conf. on Methods and Tools for the Information Systems Life Cycle, Verrijn-Stuart and 011e (eds), North-Holland, pp131–149
Gamma E., Helm R., Johnson R., Vlissides J. (1993), “Design patterns: Abstraction and Reuse of Object-Oriented Design”,Proc. of the ECOOP’93 Conf., Sringer Verlag
Harmsen F et al (1994), “Situational method engineering for informational system project approaches”,in Method and Associated Tools for the Information Systems Life Cycle, VerrijnStuart and 011e (eds.), North Holland, pp169–194
Hidding G.J. (1994), “Methodology information: who uses it and why not?” Proc. WITS-94. Vancouver, Canada
Jones T.C. (1984), “Reusability in programming: a survey of the state of the art”. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,SE Vol 10, Nol
Johnson R. E., Foote B. (1988), “Designing reusable classes”,Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, Vol 1, No3
Johnson R.E., Russo F. (1991), “Reusing object-oriented design”, Technical report UIUCDCS 91–1696, May 1991, University of Illinois
Krasner G.E, Pope S.T (1988), “A cookbook for using the Model-View Controller user interface in Smalltalk-80”,Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, Vol 1, No3
Krogstie J., Lindland O.I., Sindre G. ( 1995 a),“Defining quality aspects for conceptual models”, in E.D. Falkenberg et al., editor, Information Systems Concepts, Proc. ISCO3, Marburg, Germany, North Holland
Krogstie J., Lindland O.I., Sindre G, (1995 b), “Towards a Depeer Understanding of Quality in Requirements Engineering” in Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE’95, livari J. and Lyytinen K. (eds), Springer Verlag
Lyytinen K. (1987), “Different perspectives on information systems: problems and solutions”,ACM Computing Surveys, Vol 19, Nol 02 (1993) “The 02 User Manual December”
Olle T. W., J. Hagelstein, I. MacDonald, C. Rolland, F. Van Assche, A. A. Verrijn-Stuart. (1988), “Information Systems Methodologies: A Framework for Understanding”,Addison Wesley
Plihon V. (1994), “The OMT, The OOA, The SA/SD, The E/R, The 0*, The OOD Methodology” NATURE Deliverable DP2
Plihon V., Rolland C. (1995), “Modelling Ways-of-Working”,Proc 7th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE’95, Springer Verlag
Pohl K. (1993), “The Three Dimensions of Requirement Engineering”, 5th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Paris, France, June 1993
Prakash N. (1994), “A Process View of Methodologies”,6th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE’94, Springer Verlag
N. Prat (1995), “Using learning techniques for process model improvement”, Internal report, CRI ( Centre de Recherche en Informatique ), University of Paris-Sorbonne
Pree W. (1995), “Design Patterns for Object-Oriented Software Development”,Addison Wesley
Prieto-Diaz R., Freeman (1987), P., “Classifying software for reusability”, IEEE Software. Vol. 4, No. 1
Rolland C. (1994), “A Contextual Approach to modeling the Requirements Engineering Process”, SEKE’94, 6th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Vilnius, Lithuania
Rolland C., Souveyet C., Moreno M. (Rolland, 1995), “An Approach for Defining Ways-OfWorking”,Information Systems, Vol 20, No4, pp337–359
Rolland C.,Plihon V. (1996), “Using generic chunks to generate process models fragments” in Proc.of 2nd IEEE Int. Conf. on Requirements Engineering“, ICRE’96, Colorado Spring Tempora (1994), Tempora ESPRIT project: final report
Schmitt J.R. (1993), “Product Modeling in Requirements Engineering Process Modeling”. IFIP TC8 Int. Conf. on Information Systems Development Process, Prakash., Pernici and Rolland (eds) North Holland
Schmitt J.R. (1995), “Méta-modélisation des démarches d’analyse”,Phd thesis, University of Paris6 Jussieu
Schwer S., Rolland C. (1995), “Theoretical formalization of the process meta-modelling approach”,internal CRI report 95–08, University of Paris 1, France.
Si-Said S., Rolland C., Grosz G. (1996), “MENTOR: A Computer Aided Requirements Engineering Environment”,in Proc 8th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAISE’96), Springer Verlag.
Weinand A., Gamma E., Marty R. (1989), “Design and implementation of ET++, a seamless oject-oriented applcation framework”,Journal of Structured Programming, Vol 10, No2, pp6387
Welke R, and Kumar K. (1991), “Method engineering: a proposal for situation-specific methodology construction”, in Systems Analysis and Design: A Research Agenda. Cotterman and Senn(eds ), Wiley
Wilson D.A, Rosenstein L.S., Shafer D. (1991), “Programming with MacApp”,Addison-Wesley
Wirfs-Brock J., Johnson R. (1990), “Surveying current research in Object-Oriented Design”. Communications of ACM, Vol 33, No9
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rolland, C., Prakash, N. (1996). A Proposal For Context-Specific Method Engineering. In: Brinkkemper, S., Lyytinen, K., Welke, R.J. (eds) Method Engineering. ME 1996. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35080-6_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35080-6_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5824-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35080-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive