Situational Method Engineering for Information Systems Project Approaches

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of Situational Method Engi-neering, which is a type of method engineering. Situational Method Engineering aims at harmonisation of methods by providing rules to configure project-specific methods out of fragments from existing standard methods. It stems from the need for controlled flexibility, which is a compromise between the ad-hoc tuning of methods and the application of rigid, standard methods. Method fragments are stored in a method base, which constitutes the central repository of a Com-puter Aided Method Engineering (CAME) tool. The CAME tool is used to manipulate method fragments in order to configure project-specific methods. We present a model of the method base, as well as operations on method fragments and examples of required consistency rules for a configured method. Moreover, we discuss the spectrum of approaches to Situational Method Engineering. The paper is concluded with a description of the CAME tool under development.