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A POLYMORPHIC CONTE XT FRAME TO SUPPORT SCALABILITY AND EVOLVABILITY OF INFORMATION 187
the project team members to understand what he/she
is working on and why he/she is using such a diagram
or concept has to be taken into account (Potts,
1989; Rolland and Souveyet, 1995; si Said and Rolland,
1998). In our approach, ISD tasks are driven by
the problem one may face through his/her daily work,
instead of the result he/she wants to get.
Notations provided to support ISD tasks are more
and more richer (Object Management Group, 2001).
They also become more and more complex and therefore
seems to be the heart of ISD: project team members
focus on the use of the different diagrams or concepts
provided by the notation much more than on
the tasks to be performed. Our approach helps in recentering
the work on tasks instead of notation.
With regards to ISD for reuse, fragments are defined
through an intention inciting them to carefully
specify the aim of the fragment. A fragment context
is associated to each new-built fragment to enforce its
definition with regards to the working framework.
With regards to ISD by reuse, requests are expressed
in terms of problem and problem context. Solutions
are given in terms of route-map made of fragments
including guidelines and heuristics to help in
ISD tasks.
An example of fragment is given in figure
1. In this figure, a fragment named
Requirement-out-of-scope is presented. Its
fragment context indicates it presents guidelines for
when dealing with a running software. There is an
associate fragment DB-out-of-scope, which is
complementary. There is no incompatible fragments.
The intention explain the purpose of the fragment
which is to help in documenting the running part of
the application under which the development will take
place. Associated guidelines in UML are then given.
Name
Requirement−Out−of−Scope
Fragment Context
{[base − software − running software]}
Related Fragments BusinessDomain−Out−of−Scope − complementarity − 0.75
Non−compatible Fragments −
Intention To document existing parts of the running software useful to
understand the purpose of the new software but not directly related to the
new development.
Guidelines Notation UML use−case diagrams
Description Add use−cases dedicated to running functionalities
increasing the understanding of the software. Stereotype them
with .
Group all the use−cases stereotyped in a
package (or set of packages) also stereotyped
Figure 1: An example of fragment
Figure 2 summarizes the structure of our framework
with the two main sources of information: the
context frame and the process fragment repository,
on top of which mechanisms for ISD by re-use and
for re-use are provided to the project team members,
while means of context management are provided to
methodologists.
Figure 2: Framework overview
In this paper, we focus on the context frame. And
we show how useful it is for ISD by reuse and for
reuse.
3 A SCALABLE AND
POLYMORPHIC CONTEXT
FRAME
The context frame allows methodologists to define a
common working frame for all the project team members
and all the projects in the company. The working
frame is defined through a context made of criterias
and allowing then project team members to better
qualify their ISD problem in order to get a customized
solution.
A criteria represents a point of view or an aspect
on the development process that methodologists want
to highlight in order to help project team members to
apply techniques and methods to focus on critical aspects
of the development process. Through ISD for
reuse, criterias help in qualifying fragments to anticipate
and ease their reuse. Through ISD by reuse, criterias
help in specifying the problem to solve in order to
get adapted fragments. Information characterizing the
software to develop (Software to develop includes a
User Interface, Software to develop includes a
database, Software to develop is distributed,
Software to develop is build on a running application),
the competence of the project team members
in charge of the development (expert, medium, beginner),
and the project management features (Delivery
strategy, Realization strategy, Time pressure) areexample
of useful criterias to customize the process.
In the following, we discuss first the structure of
the context frame. Then, we show how to use it.