SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT METHOD RATIONALE A Conceptual Framework for Analysis
Pär J. Ågerfalk, Kai Wistrand · 2003
The rationale of their creators inherently influences information systems development methods. Rationale, which is always based on the creator's values and assumptions about the problem domain, motivates, implicit or explicit, the different modelling activities and primitives prescribed by a method. The method, and hence its inherited rationale, directs method users' attention toward certain kinds of phenomena and away from others. Today we see a trend towards standardizing systems development in terms of standard modelling languages and standard development processes. When using an existing (standard) method, developers are forced to rely on the rationale of that particular method. Sometimes, however, there are reasons to enhance the standard method to reflect aspects of the world held as important by the method users -- but not emphasized by the method creator. Hence, there is a need to integrate the rationale of the method users with that of the existing method. In this paper, we investigate what method rationale is and how it can be modelled and analysed. The paper employs a method engineering approach in that it proposes method support for analysing, describing and integrating method rationale -- an emerging essential task for method engineers in a world of standardization.