INTEROP deliverable DTG 6.1 : state of the art: Exploration of methods and method engineering approaches

The main objective of this deliverable is to provide material for the requirements analysis for a method chunk repository. The work has been carried out within INTEROP Task Group 6 starting at the Valencia work shop in May 2005 until the Bologna workshop in October 2005. The deliverable focuses on the state of the art analysis, the concepts and the collaboration platform on which we plan to build the rest of our work to develop, manage, apply and use method chunks and to analyse the impact on key interoperability issues. We strive to reuse available knowledge and results and associate our efforts to the ATHENA project. IT solutions provided by new technologies, give rise to development and sharing of reusable method chunks. By a method chunk we mean an autonomous and coherent part of a method supporting the realisation of some specific system development or management activity Method chunks and reference models can become visual models in digital form to support user interactive adaptation, extension, use, management and maintenance of other models, knowledge and data. By utilising new technology it is our aim to provide a flexible and useful method chunk repository. Method chunks can be used to package a variety of solutions as reusable, adaptable services and software components. In this context we find that a repository solution can be used to address a set of interoperability issues which have been identified to have relevance to both industry and research. We describe how a method chunk repository can be organised and populated to provide concrete support in dealing with interoperability in practice. We have identified a set of interoperability issues from the ontology, enterprise modelling and architecture & platform domains of INTEROP. In order to provide a better scoping of problems, these have been complemented by a set of interoperability issues concerning business management, process management, knowledge management, information management, software management and data management. The deliverable is a living document which reflects the work plan of Task Group 6. The parts which are completed so far concern the definition of method chunk, concepts and terms, a method chunk meta-model the initial analysis of method chunks, and interoperability issues to be considered in developing the method chunk repository. This content provides the foundation for the requirements on the method chunk repository.