An Emerging Need for a New Software Engineering Method

The strong convergence of recent modeling languages, development processes and methodologies for developing real-time systems underlines a set of requirements for a more methodical approach. This paper presents the issues related to the lack of method in the field of software engineering for real-time systems (in particular avionic systems). We will mainly describe what converge in the new methodologies that are quite adopted but not implemented as methods. The Unified Process is analyzed and revisited in order to support the new types of requirements that we have identified to require the integration of formal methods, a proof-based system engineering approach in the first steps, and a refocusing on the model-driven development.