Supporting the Domain Lifecycle

CASE tools are notorious for forcing organizations to adapt to a standard development methodology. The underlying assumption is that a universally applicable development method exists and it is up to the organization to conform to that method. But software development is no longer a homogeneous field. As computers are applied to an increasingly diverse set of applications, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the different demands these domains place on the development process. Our solution to this dilemma is to create an organization-wide development infrastructure based on accumulated experiences within application and technical domains. The domain lifecycle formalizes a process for accumulating project experiences and creating domain knowledge than can be used to increase product quality and improve development productivity. Supporting the domain lifecycle eases development of software that has been developed previously in the organization, freeing designers to concentrate on less well-known elements of an application.