Metamodelling for Software Engineering

CHAPTER 7

Creating and Using a Methodology Generated from the Metamodel

In this chapter, we explore by example how one can create a methodology from the metamodels described earlier in this book. Figure 7.1 illustrates four packages that represent the four elements of the Metamodel/Method domain shown in Figure 3.4. In Figure 7.1, we show explicitly the two faces of the enactment domain: static and dynamic, by the “Endeavour” and “RunTime” packages.

The method engineer or methodologist is concerned with the metamodel elements and the method fragments generated by them (labelled Method:: MethodologyElement in Figure 7.1). These issues have been the focus of the earlier part of this book. The project manager and members of the development team, perhaps aided by the method engineer, now have to construct a method from these fragments (labelled Method::Methodology in Figure 7.1). This is then applied to a particular project by incorporation of project-specific elements, in the same way as in situational method engineering (SME). These project-specific elements are labelled Endeavour::Project in the Endeavour package in Figure 7.1, which is then enacted at RunTime.

When creating method fragments from the metamodel and when using a metamodel that supports powertype patterns, as discussed throughout this book, the method engineer needs to identify all the xxx/*Kind pairs that may be necessary. For example, as shown in Figure 7.2, one might need to be able to work with a requirements specification ...