Model Driven Development (MDD) is a promising approach in software development, mainly due to the pivotal role of models in the process, and the high potential it provides for automated model/software generation. Since software processes are software too (as aptly stated by Osterweil), any technique or approach applied in the context of software development is also of potential use in the development of software development processes. Accordingly, the MDD approach can potentially be applied in the context of Situational Method Engineering¬ (SME) − a branch devoted to the study of developing bespoke software development processes and methods based on the specific characteristics of the development project at hand.
Based on this notion, the main objective of this research is the development of a Model-Driven Method Engineering (MDME) Framework. To this aim, we first define process models at various levels of abstraction, analogous to their counterparts in MDD – i.e., Computation-Independent, Platform-Independent, and Platform-Specific Models. We then propose a set of methods and techniques to transform abstract models into concrete ones. The resulting MDME framework can be used by method engineers to construct custom software development methodologies through an MDD approach. The framework will ultimately be validated through application in a small-scale SME project.