Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Method Engineering, ME is the discipline of developing information systems development methods. Initially, it was thought that a universal method (Saeki & Wenyin, 1994) that was capable of addressing the needs of all information system development projects could be defined. However, this view was rejected (Hoef, Rob, Rolf, & Vincent, 1997; Karlsson & Ågerfalk, 2004). Since project needs vary with projects and projects vary in their characteristics, development of methods may require specific adaptations (Anat & Iris, 2011). Therefore, an engineering technique for this is required. The area of Situational Method Engineering, SME was developed to build methods for specific development situations. Situational Method Engineering, SME, assumes the existence of a method base from which method components could be retrieved and assembled to form the desired method.
The assembly process has been illustrated in Brinkkemper, Saeki, and Harmsen (1998) where state chart and object models have been assembled together to form a new method.
Ralyté, Rébecca, and Rolland (2003) proposed a two-step goal oriented SME process: first, a method engineering, ME, goal is established, second, assembly based method engineering task is carried out by eliciting ME intentions. Prakash, Srivastava, Gupta, and Arora (2007) proposed a three stage SME process: intention matching, architecture matching, and method implementation matching.
The situation of SME can be conceptualized in many ways, as descriptors (Rolland & Prakash, 1996), contingency factors (Slooten & Brinkkemper, 1993; Lemmen & Punter, 1994; Swede & Vliet, 1994; Slooten, 1995), project factors (Harmsen, Brinkkemper, & Han Oei, 1994), situation factors (Harmsen, Lubbers, & Wijers, 1995), context type (Deneckere, Elena, & Bruno, 2010) and project type (Bucher, Klesse, Kurpjuweit, &Winter, 2007; Bucher & Winter, 2008). Table 1 summarizes the proposals made by different authors for the notion of a situation.