Towards a meta-tool for change-centric method engineering: A typology of generic operators

Abstract

The work presented in this paper considers how Method Engineering (ME) helps in method changes that are required by Information Systems (IS) changes. In fact, ME provides different approaches allowing to construct situation-specific methods by adapting, extending, improving existing methods or by assembling method components. All these approaches use a set of operations to realize these method changes. Our objective in this paper is to provide a metatool for change-centric ME which takes the form of a typology of generic ME operators. The operators for each specific ME approach are instantiated from the generic ones. The paper illustrates and discusses the instantiation of the generic typology for two assembly-based ME approaches. © Springer-Verlag 2004.