Stephan Kurpjuweit

Situational Method Engineering

Based on the experience that there cannot be a “one-size-fits-all” method, different situational method engineering approaches are examined in this paper. The result of the analysis shows that “situations” are conceptualized very imprecisely. Therefore, we propose to differentiate between “context” and “project type” in situational method engineering. Especially context is neglected in existing method engineering approaches. To close this gap, we enhance existing method engineering processes by adding three steps to facilitate the identification of context factors and project type factors, enabling the engineering of both contextual and project type-specific methods. Furthermore, we propose a set of extensions to the method engineering meta model that allow the method engineer to differentiate between “context” and “project type” in describing situational methods.

Concern-oriented business architecture engineering

Organizations are subject to constant evolution and must systematically analyze and design the impact of change to implement it consistently across all organizational domains. A thorough understanding of all relevant business-related artifacts as well as their relationships is a prerequisite to achieve this. For many organizations, business architecture management is a means to ensure the correct and up-to-date documentation of these artifacts. One challenge of business architecture management is the development a company-specific business architecture meta model. Two directions of existing work provide partial solutions: (1) generic (meta) modeling methods and (2) business architecture meta models and languages. We argue that these two approaches complement each other and should be applied in an integrated way. The goal of this contribution is to propose such an integrated approach to business architecture engineering. The development of this approach follows the design research process and is based on experiences gained in three industrial business architecture engineering projects.