Product Line Engineering (PLE) is a well-established discipline in software engineering, and has gained widespread adoption in industry. Software product lines are considered an efficient means for mass production of software systems, and many companies have based their software development processes on PLE principles and practices.
Situational Method Engineering (SME) has so far been mainly concerned with metamodels and method chunk repositories; through using these means, methodologies are constructed or extended to address the specific requirements of a software development project. A recent development in SME is the introduction of “Process” Line Engineering, which promises new methods for producing Process Families. Although inspired by PLE, Process Line Engineering has not made adequate use of the lessons learnt from PLE.
The objective of this project is to use PLE techniques and processes in Process Line Engineering and SME, with the specific aim of enhancing the development of agent-oriented methodologies. To this aim, we will first survey and analyze the process line engineering methods that are currently used in SME; the shortcomings of these methods will thus be identified. PLE techniques and processes will then be used for addressing these shortcomings, especially in the context of developing or extending agent-oriented methodologies. The intended end result is a new and enhanced process line engineering method for engineering agent-oriented methodologies; this proposed method will be validated through a case study.