Conceptual Analysis of Current ME Artifacts in Terms of Coverage: A Contextual Approach

Intellectual and methodical support is needed to engineer, in a situational manner, methods for requirements engineering (RE), and more generally for information systems development (ISD). In this paper we define a contextual framework, based on semiotics, linguistics, and the activity theory, and apply it to analyze the coverage of support that current method engineering (ME) artifacts provide for ME. The analysis shows that ME artifacts are rather limited in their support of ME workflows and deploy perspectives that only partly cover multifaceted aspects of ME contexts and ISD contexts. Based on the analysis, we suggest a more systematic use of perspectives in crafting better ME artifacts.