Assembly Process Model
An assembly process model for method engineering
Jolita Ralyté, Colette Rolland
Centre de Recherche en Informatique Université Paris 1 Sorbonne 90, rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris, France e-mail : ralyte, rolland@univ-paris1.fr
Abstract
The need for a better productivity of system engineering teams, as well as a better quality of products motivates the development of solutions to adapt methods to the project situation at hand. This is known as situational method engineering. In this paper we propose a generic process model to support the construction of a new method by assembling method chunks generated from different methods that are stored in a method base. The emphasis is on the guidance provided by the process model, as well as on the means underlying guidelines such as similarity measures and assembly operators. The process model is exemplified with a case study.
1
Introduction
We are concerned with Situational Method Engineering (SME). SME aims at defining information systems development methods by reusing and assembling different existing method fragments. The term method fragment was coined by Harmsen in [Harmsen 94] by analogy with the notion of a software component. Similarly to the component driven construction of software systems, SME promotes the construction of a method by assembling reusable method fragments stored in some method base [Seaki 93], [Harmsen 97], [Rolland 98a], [Ralyte 99b]. As a consequence SME, favours the construction of modular methods that can be modified and augmented to meet the requirements of a given situation [Harmsen 94], [Slooten 93]. Therefore, a method is viewed as a collection of method fragments that we prefer to call method chunks [Rolland 96], [Ralyte 99b] to emphasise the coherency and autonomy of such method modules. New methods can be constructed by selecting fragments/chunks from different methods which are the most appropriate to a given situation [Brinkkemper 98], [Plihon 98]. Thus, method
Jolita Ralyté, Colette Rolland
Centre de Recherche en Informatique Université Paris 1 Sorbonne 90, rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris, France e-mail : ralyte, rolland@univ-paris1.fr
Abstract
The need for a better productivity of system engineering teams, as well as a better quality of products motivates the development of solutions to adapt methods to the project situation at hand. This is known as situational method engineering. In this paper we propose a generic process model to support the construction of a new method by assembling method chunks generated from different methods that are stored in a method base. The emphasis is on the guidance provided by the process model, as well as on the means underlying guidelines such as similarity measures and assembly operators. The process model is exemplified with a case study.
1
Introduction
We are concerned with Situational Method Engineering (SME). SME aims at defining information systems development methods by reusing and assembling different existing method fragments. The term method fragment was coined by Harmsen in [Harmsen 94] by analogy with the notion of a software component. Similarly to the component driven construction of software systems, SME promotes the construction of a method by assembling reusable method fragments stored in some method base [Seaki 93], [Harmsen 97], [Rolland 98a], [Ralyte 99b]. As a consequence SME, favours the construction of modular methods that can be modified and augmented to meet the requirements of a given situation [Harmsen 94], [Slooten 93]. Therefore, a method is viewed as a collection of method fragments that we prefer to call method chunks [Rolland 96], [Ralyte 99b] to emphasise the coherency and autonomy of such method modules. New methods can be constructed by selecting fragments/chunks from different methods which are the most appropriate to a given situation [Brinkkemper 98], [Plihon 98]. Thus, method