Metamodelling for Software Engineering

1.4 SUMMARY

We have introduced the idea of a software development methodology as a systematic way of doing things in the discipline of software engineering. We have argued that it is fruitless to pursue the creation of a one-size-fits-all methodology for software development, leading to our acceptance of situational method engineering as currently the best way of proceeding. A single “frozen” or “branded” methodology can be regarded as one implicitly constructed using ME and then having the method components welded together permanently. Thus, our metamodelling discussion is equally applicable in this case also.

We have drawn attention to the needs of two software communities: the method engineer, or methodologist, who takes part in the creation of a methodology specific to the organization's situation and the software development team who use that methodology on real endeavours.

This leads us to enquire about the way in which such a methodological approach can be made rigorous. The answer currently used in the software engineering community is metamodels (although ontologies are likely to be used much more in the future). Metamodels can be used to underpin modelling languages, process models and methodology creation.