Method Engineering: A Service-Oriented Approach - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 329

1 Introduction
In the field of Information Systems (IS) engineering, the years 80-90 have seen
the emergence of many IS development methods [ 11, 16, 18, 33, 35, 36] . Many of
these methods have allowed a better control of the complexity, cost and timing of
development of IS. They have also provided more rigorous way of working in the
development process by introducing particular models, representation formalisms
and levels of abstraction. These methods have been widely used in industry and they
have contributed to a better understanding of design tasks. Although these methods
have now reached a certain maturity, it is clear they are still inappropriate in many
contexts, the products they construct are not always satisfactory and they do not
support new engineering paradigms such as component-based software engineering
or model driven engineering.
In this context, method engineering [ 1, 13, 27, 38] has emerged as a new research
discipline. Method engineering is concerned with the process of designing and
constructing methods that fits a project situation. The research field on method
engineering is dominated by various approaches that attempt to contribute to an
understanding of method development. The instantiation approach [5, 10, 28] aims
to construct a new method from meta-method, the configuration approach [ 14, 15]
is based on the existence of a base method that we can adapt to a particular situa-
tion, and finally the composition approach [ 2, 26, 37] uses assembly techniques on
method components.
Colette Rolland took an important role in the emergence of method engineering
as a specific discipline. The approach presented in this chapter benefit of several
results that Colette has produced in this discipline, particularly, the goal modeling
approach [ 31] , the component [ 30, 34] and the service-based [ 9, 29, 32] engineering
perspectives.
This chapter contributes to the method engineering discipline by presenting
an approach to method construction that explicitly addresses method components
as services (so-called method services ) and method construction is considered
as a service dynamic composition process. This approach makes use of some
engineering principles from component-based software engineering (CBSE) and
service-oriented engineering (SOE). Method services specification are centered on
usage concerns (consumer's point of view) and they support adaptation mecha-
nisms to fit project context. In fact, method services are considered as available
web resources and accessible by a wide range of developers who need methods to
solve development problems in particular contexts.
SO2M is a method engineering approach [ 6, 7] , in which a method is constructed
“on the fly” by discovering, adapting and dynamically composing existing method
services . The discovery, adaptation and composition of services are driven by a pro-
cess of goal satisfaction. This approach differs from the usual definition in which a
method is considered as an a-priori fixed set of languages, processes, product mod-
els.... Rather the approach supports flexibility in method construction by composing
method services in different ways according the context.