Towards Common Ground in SME: An Ontology of Method Descriptors

Part 3: Method Engineering FoundationsInternational audienceThe Method Engineering (ME) community is a prolific research domain where competing Situational Method Engineering (SME) approaches have been defined and used for composing, adapting or/and configuring a method into modular constructs according to their own modularization vision. This diversity shows the richness of the ME domain but implies some drawback like unnecessary confusion for non ME expert, lack of standard & interoperability, lack of implementation tool. However, researchers are agreed that a common ground in SME is a hot matter of discussion. Assuming that the differences between SME approaches are purposeful, we propose to reach a semantic common ground on what types of core concepts constitute a method descriptor. To achieve it, an ontology-based approach is applied in SME to design an ontology of method descriptors as a domain ontology. The semantics of the six most popular SME approaches modular constructs are defined according to this ontology in order to show its usage and its relevance. Finally, usage scenarios have been sketched to show that the ontology can be the start up phase for reducing the ME drawbacks mentioned above

Towards Method Component Contextualization

International audienceMethod Engineering (ME) is a discipline which aims to bring effective solutions to the construction, improvement and modification of the methods used to develop Information Systems (IS). Situational Method Engineering (SME) promotes the idea of retrieving, adapting and tailoring components, rather than complete methodologies, to the specific context. Existing SME approaches use the notion of context for characterizing situations of IS development projects and for guiding the method components selection from a repository. However, in the reviewed literature, there is no proposed approach to specify the specific context of method components. This paper provides a detailed vision of context and a process for contextualizing methods in the IS domain. This proposal is illustrated with three case studies: scenario conceptualization, project portfolio management, and decision-making

Reusing Scenario Based Approaches in Requirement Engineering Methods: CREWS Method Base

National audienceIn the CREWS project four different scenario-based approaches have been developed with the aim of supporting system requirements acquisition and validation in a systematic way. Two approaches deal with the requirements acquisition from real world scenes [Haumer 98] and from natural language scenario descriptions [Rolland 97], [Rolland 98a]. Two other approaches deal with the requirements validation through systematic scenario generation coupled to scenario walkthrough [Sutcliffe 98] and scenario animation [Dubois 98]. The project hypothesis is that each of the approaches might be useful in specific project situations which are not well tackled by existing analysis methods and therefore, that it is worth looking for the integration of such approaches in current methods. This shall lead to an enhancement of the existing methods with scenario-based techniques. Moreover, in the CREWS project we have proposed a framework for classifying scenarios [Rolland 98b] as a way to explore the issues underlying scenario based approaches in Requirements Engineering (RE). The application of this framework on several scenario based approaches proven the existence of the variety of products and practices of scenarios. We situate our work in the situational method engineering domain. The situational method engineering discipline aims at defining information systems development methods by reusing and assembling different existing method fragments. This approach allows to construct modular methods which can be modified and augmented to meet the requirements of a given situation. Following this approach, a method is viewed as a collection of method fragments [Rolland 96], [Harmsen 94], [Harmsen 97]. New methods can be constructed by selecting fragments from different methods which are the more appropriate to a given situation [Brinkkemper 98], [Plihon 98]. Thus, method fragments are the basic building blocks which allow to define methods in a modular way. In our work we are interested in specific method fragments, namely scenario based approaches, that we call scenario method chunks. The objective of our work is to develop an approach for integrating different kinds of scenarios as method components into usual RE methods. To achieve this goal we propose to represent the scenario based approaches in a method base as method components called scenario method chunks. We need also to define the approach for retrieving relevant scenario method chunk for the situation at hand. Finally, we need to define the approach supporting the integration of the retrieved component with the existing RE method or with another method component

Situationsgerechte Methodenweiterentwicklung auf Basis von MetaMe am Beispiel der Server-System-Entwicklung

Die Einführung domänenspezifischer Entwicklungsmethoden in Unternehmen birgt Risiken. Der Aufwand, der aus einer kompletten Ersetzungeiner bestehenden Entwicklungsmethode hervorgeht, kann sehr umfangreich sein und dadurch sind die Investitionskosten schlecht planbar. Darüber hinaus sind die erwarteten Vorteile mit Unsicherheiten behaftet, denn jedes Unternehmen besitzt schlecht änderbare, individuelle Eigenschaften, die so genannten Situationsfaktoren. Sie beschreiben den Methodenkontext, in dem die Entwicklungsmethode angewendet wird. Passt die domänenspezifische Entwicklungsmethode nicht zu dem gegebenen Methodenkontext, ist eine erfolgreiche Einführung gefährdet. Zur Reduzierung der genannten Risiken erweitert diese Arbeit den bestehenden Ansatz MetaMe, eine Meta-Methode zur Entwicklung von individuellen Softwareentwicklungsmethoden, um die Eigenschaften der situationsgerechten Methodenweiterentwicklung. Eine zusätzliche Ist-Analyse identifiziert die vorhandene Entwicklungsmethode, die mittels einer neuen Sprache modellbasiert dokumentiert wird. Eine Verbesserungs-Analyse ermittelt darauf aufbauend die Optimierungspotenziale und Situationsfaktoren, aus denen geeigneteMethodenanforderungen erstellt werden. Mit Hilfe der Methodenanforderungen werden iterative Projekte zur Methodenweiterentwicklung definiert. Das ermöglicht die von Unternehmengewünschte schrittweise Änderung der Entwicklungsmethoden. Weiterhin wird gezeigt, wie die Methode mittels Methodenanforderungen an den Methodenkontextangepasst werden kann. Das in dieser Arbeit vorgestellte Vorgehen wird exemplarisch auf zwei industrielle Anwendungsbeispiele aus dem Bereich der Server-System-Entwicklung angewendet. Für jedes Beispiel wird eine individuell entwickelte Entwicklungsmethode vorgestellt.It is risky to introduce domain-specific engineering methods to different companies. The effort to replace an existing engineering method can be extensive so that investment costs are hard to judge. Beside that, the expected advantages have uncertainties because each company has poorly changeable, individual properties, so called situational factors. They describe the method context in that the engineering method will be applied. If the engineering method does not fit to the method context, a successful introduction is jeopardized.To reduce the mentioned risks, this thesis enhances the known approach, MetaMe, a meta-method to develop individual software engineering methods, regarding the characteristics of situational method enhancements. It adds the analysis of the current state to identify the existing engineering method. The engineering method will be described in a model-based manner with a newly introduced language. A demand analysis identifies single improvements and situational factors. Upon that information method requirements are created. Based on the method requirements iterative method enhancement projects are defined. With that it is possible to do a step wise change of engineering methods, which is the desired approach of the companies. Furthermore, it will be shown how to adjust the engineering method according to the method context based on the method requirements.The new method engineering approach is substantiated by two industrial case studies in the area of server-systems-engineering. For each example an individually developed engineering method will be presented.vorgelegt von Michael SpijkermanTag der Verteidigung: 24.03.2015Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 201

A situational approach for the definition and tailoring of a data-driven software evolution method

Successful software evolution heavily depends on the selection of the right features to be included in the next release. Such selection is difficult, and companies often report bad experiences about user acceptance. To overcome this challenge, there is an increasing number of approaches that propose intensive use of data to drive evolution. This trend has motivated the SUPERSEDE method, which proposes the collection and analysis of user feedback and monitoring data as the baseline to elicit and prioritize requirements, which are then used to plan the next release. However, every company may be interested in tailoring this method depending on factors like project size, scope, etc. In order to provide a systematic approach, we propose the use of Situational Method Engineering to describe SUPERSEDE and guide its tailoring to a particular context.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Iterative criteria-based approach to engineering the requirements of software development methodologies

Software engineering endeavours are typically based on and governed by the requirements of the target software; requirements identification is therefore an integral part of software development methodologies. Similarly, engineering a software development methodology (SDM) involves the identification of the requirements of the target methodology. Methodology engineering approaches pay special attention to this issue; however, they make little use of existing methodologies as sources of insight into methodology requirements. The authors propose an iterative method for eliciting and specifying the requirements of a SDM using existing methodologies as supplementary resources. The method is performed as the analysis phase of a methodology engineering process aimed at the ultimate design and implementation of a target methodology. An initial set of requirements is first identified through analysing the characteristics of the development situation at hand and/or via delineating the general features desirable in the target methodology. These initial requirements are used as evaluation criteria; refined through iterative application to a select set of relevant methodologies. The finalised criteria highlight the qualities that the target methodology is expected to possess, and are therefore used as a basis for de. ning the final set of requirements. In an example, the authors demonstrate how the proposed elicitation process can be used for identifying the requirements of a general object-oriented SDM. Owing to its basis in knowledge gained from existing methodologies and practices, the proposed method can help methodology engineers produce a set of requirements that is not only more complete in span, but also more concrete and rigorous

Using contextual goal models for constructing situational methods

Situation and intention are two fundamental notions in situational method engineering (SME). They are used to assess the context of an ISD project and to specify method requirements in this context. They also allow defining the goals of the method chunks and the conditions under which they can be applied. In this way, the selection and assembly of method chunks for a particular ISD project is driven by matching situational method requirements to method chunks’ goals and context descriptions. In this paper we propose the use of contextual goal models for supporting all SME steps. Our approach is based on iStar2.0 modeling language that we extend with contextual annotations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft