Situational Method Engineering-The Methodology to Write Methodologies
I was introduced to this “meta-methodology” by Professor Gutzwiller and Professor Osterle at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland.
Method Engineering is the discipline of designing, building and adapting methods. Methods are sets of procedures, techniques and tools that define a sequence of activities that will help to meet a defined goal. Although many methods (or methodologies) are predefined, my objective here is to describe how a method can be customized from the various activities, techniques and tools in order to solve unique problems-hence the title “Situational Method Engineering.”
Overview
Description of Terms
A procedure model contains the recommended sequence of activities. For example, in systems implementations analysis, design, build, test, data conversion, documentation, training and implementation are generally done in this sequence.
Techniques describe how results can be achieved. For example, the technique to develop documentation may be Business Process Procedures and the tool used MS Word.
Tools can be used to support the application of one or more techniques. For instance MS Powerpoint may be used to draw an Activity Chain Diagram that is used to support analysis or design activities.
Result documents are produced for the documentation of the results of most activities. For example, a result document for system design would be a Key Decision Document
Roles describe who is participating in an activity. These are determined by the decisions that have to be taken and the knowledge required to complete the result documents. RACI is one method which could be used to show this.
A metamodel is a model of the aspects or attributes of some physical reality that we are interested in for our particular purpose. For instance an employer may want to know name, address, and government ID of an a person who is an employee, but an online retail site may want to record name, address, and credit card number.
Example
Here is a simple example of a method to clean up data in a badly implemented ERP system.
