Evolutionary Method Engineering - A Case Study in Meta Modeling

Meta modeling is a widely established means for developing conceptual modeling methods (CMM). Here, we show how a CMM for the structured conceptual design of management information systems has been developed in an evolutionary process based on meta modeling. The aim of management information systems is to satisfy the information need managers have to successfully accomplish their tasks. The quality of management decisions is highly dependent on the information they are based on. A structured conceptual design of management information systems is a crucial task that has to precede their implementation and monitoring. Several conceptual modeling methods have been developed in order to support the specification of data warehouse structures and management information systems. However, none of them was found to be appropriate to bridge the communication gap in the process of requirements analysis. Thus, in an ongoing research effort, a CMM has been designed to adequately support the conceptual design of management information systems. Several case studies were conducted and in an iterative process the findings were incorporated to improve the initial CMM. The result of this process is a CMM quite different to the original one. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the evolutionary development of a CMM using meta modeling and to show how it has successfully been applied in multiple case studies.