From Method Fragments to Method Services

TL;DR

This paper analyzes existing method fragments in Method Engineering, identifies their drawbacks, and proposes an improved 'method service' concept based on the service paradigm to enhance standardization and usability.

Contribution

It introduces the 'method service' concept for method fragments, applying the service paradigm to improve standardization and usage orientation in Method Engineering.

Findings

Identified key drawbacks of current method fragments.

Proposed the 'method service' concept to address these issues.

Discussed a potential unified representation of method fragments.

Abstract

In Method Engineering (ME) science, the key issue is the consideration of information system development methods as fragments. Numerous ME approaches have produced several definitions of method parts. Different in nature, these fragments have nevertheless some common disadvantages: lack of implementation tools, insufficient standardization effort, and so on. On the whole, the observed drawbacks are related to the shortage of usage orientation. We have proceeded to an in-depth analysis of existing method fragments within a comparison framework in order to identify their drawbacks. We suggest overcoming them by an improvement of the ?method service? concept. In this paper, the method service is defined through the service paradigm applied to a specific method fragment ? chunk. A discussion on the possibility to develop a unique representation of method fragment completes our contribution.