Towards method engineering for agile software development: Theory and practice

Since their introduction at around the turn of the millennium, agile methods have taken the software process research and practice by storm. However, despite their wide and ever-expanding acceptance, many of those methods have limitations in terms of the types of projecis they could support. In parallel, there is mounting evidence that creating a method that is optimum for every software project is unattainable and impractical, In this paper, we propose not the selection or the adoption of a single agile method but the adoption and diffusion of a well established and recognized method flamework in which an organizational methodology is constructed from method fragments using the concepts of method engineering. This paper briefly reports on a case study of introducing method engineering using the OPEN process framework to construct an agile method for a multi-national legal publishing company who realized the need for a flexible and customizable method for their many projects.