An OPM-Based Metamodel of System Development Process

A modeling and development methodology is a combination of a language for expressing the universal or domain ontology and an approach for developing systems using that language. A common way for building, comparing, and evaluating methodologies is metamodeling, i.e., the process of modeling the methodology. Most of the methodology metamodels pertain only to the language part of the methodologies, leaving out the description of the system development processes or describing them informally. A major reason for this is that the methods used for metamodeling are structural- or object-oriented, and, hence, are less expressive in modeling the procedural aspects of a methodology. In this paper we apply Object-Process Methodology (OPM) to specify a generic OPM-based system development process. This metamodel is made possible due to OPM’s view of objects and processes as being on equal footing rather than viewing object classes as superiors to and owners of processes. This way, OPM enables specifying both the structural (ontological constructs) and behavioral (system development) aspects of a methodology in a single, unified view.