An Assessment of Method Engineering

The area of method engineering has been researched extensively in the last two decades. The first exclusive conference in the subject was held in 1996. In this conference a number of major strands of work and possible directions for the future were discussed. Indeed, work in almost all these directions has progressed in the last fifteen years. There is now some need to assess the work done and chart out future courses of action. Accordingly, this talk is organized in two parts, where we are and where we can go. In the first part, starting from the initial motivations of method engineering, we shall take stock of what was promised and what has been achieved. Indeed, method engineering has introduced a number of key notions: the product and process aspects of methods, meta modeling, CAME, method rationale, situational method engineering etc. We shall bring out the progress made in developing these notions. In the second part of this talk, we shall express our view that the future belongs to flexible and adaptable method engineering. We take an analogy with adaptability and configurability in software engineering and outline a framework for engineering adapted methods.