Methodological Framework to Guide the Development of Continual Evolution Methods

Abstract

Companies live in a fast-changing environment imposing to constantly evolve in order to stay competitive. Such an evolution is carried out through continuous improvement cycles or radical changes often based on innovation that concern their products, their processes, their internal organization, etc. We refer to this situation as continual evolution. There are two implications of such continual evolution from our viewpoint: (a) the instillation of the "no end point" philosophy in organizations and (b) the use of methods based (1) on continual evolution cycles (by opposition to project-based approaches that have delimited budget and dates and) and, (2) on autonomous and collective implication of the organization's actors. This article presents a methodological framework, called As-Is/As-If framework to support method engineers in handling such continual evolution. The framework offers a process model and a product meta-model that are both reusable instruments, aiming to guide the construction of continual evolution methods. The process model and product meta-model can be seen as prototypical examples to be adapted in each situation at hand using heuristics proposed as part of the framework. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated through two methods adaptations.

A case study of environmental considerations and opportunities in cyber physical systems

“…We will work on the evolution of design methods based on works such as ref. [31]. The use of scenarios may also be useful to enquire about the various uses of the physical infrastructure.…”

Supporting Method Creation, Adaptation and Execution with a Low-code Approach

“…This section provides an overview of a low code approach (LCA) focusing on the different users that can work together in the ME field. Based on our previous experience [4], we identified people with different profiles working together and playing different roles in the field of Method Engineering: (i) framework engineers know and can design different method frameworks from which methods can be created. These frameworks can be considered as method templates that may capitalize knowledge; (ii) method engineers are well aware of the Method Engineering discipline and can create a new method or adapt an existing framework or method for a specific purpose; finally (iii) method experts have deep knowledge in one (or more) specific method(s) and are able to lead its (or their) execution.…”

“…Different approaches [4,2,9,18,14] have been proposed in ME to deal with the construction of new methods by adapting existing ones. However, for the best of our knowledge there are no tools to support the creation of methods based on these approaches, and such adaptation is mainly paper-based.…”

“…However, for the best of our knowledge there are no tools to support the creation of methods based on these approaches, and such adaptation is mainly paper-based. We formalized in previous works the As-Is/As-If framework [4] as a conceptual framework dedicated to the family [9] of continual evolution methods. This framework is composed of a process model and a product meta-model that method engineers can adapt when constructing a target method.…”

“…Method engineers can be in charge of creating such frameworks. However, this task is not well guided and requires considerable experience [4]. In addition, although such frameworks provide a huge help in terms of creating a new method, little support is found afterward [4], on the usage of the method.…”