6533b861fe1ef96bd12c4d2a

RESEARCH PRODUCT

OntoFrame

subject

description

A large number of strategies, approaches, meta models, techniques and procedures have been suggested to support method engineering (ME). Most of these artifacts, here called the ME artifacts, have been constructed, in an inductive manner, synthesizing ME practice and existing ISD methods without any theory-driven conceptual foundation. Also those ME artifacts which have some conceptual groundwork have been anchored on foundations that only partly cover ME. This chapter presents an ontological framework, called OntoFrame, which can be used as a coherent conceptual foundation for the construction, analysis and comparison of ME artifacts. Due to its largeness, the authors here describe its modular structure composed of multiple ontologies. For each ontology, they highlight its purpose, subdomains, and theoretical foundations. The authors also outline the approaches and process by which OntoFrame has been constructed and deploy OntoFrame to make a comparative analysis of existing conceptual artifacts.