Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter IX
An Attempt to Establish a
Correspondence between
Development Methods and
Problem Domains
Oscar Dieste, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Marcela Genero, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Ana M. Moreno, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
ABSTRACT
Most development methods need to be adapted before they can be used in a specifi c devel-
opment project. This is because each method can be applied to a series of paradigmatic
problems, but, as a problem moves further away from the ideal, the effectiveness of each
method gradually decreases. Although development method adaptation has been a recur-
rent theme in the literature, no work has been published that proposes any sort of criterion
or metric that can be used to assess the fi tness of any one method to a particular problem.
Therefore, in this chapter, we propose a new approach that can be used to calculate the
fi tness of methods to particular problems.
INTRODUCTION
There are now a wide variety of software development methods and techniques
(Bubenko, 1986). Although it is chancy to generalize, most of these methods and techniques
are considered to be general-purpose and, therefore, are specifi cally designed to operate in
a wide range of domains and to deal with an ample variety of different problems (Glass &
Vessey, 1995).
