A Framework for Reengineering Software Development Methods

Empirical investigations clearly show that in contrast to the theory which implies that the use of methods in software development is beneficial, their use in practice is actually very low. Several reasons have been identified recently as contributing to this rather paradoxical situation. Most importantly: the socio-technical inappropriateness of a prescribed method to the company´s actual ways of working, and the rigidity, i.e. inability of a prescribed method to be adapted to a particular problem. In this paper, we present a framework that deals with these issues. Its purpose is to help software development companies to reengineer their software development processes by establishing formalized and flexible methods based on the actual ways of working in that companies. The framework has been developed in cooperation with software development companies.