Adapting Standards to Facilitate the Transition from Situational Model to Reference Model

Christian Janiesch, European Research Center for Information Systems, Leonardo-Campus 3, and Armin Stein, European Research Center for Information Systems, Leonardo-Campus 3

2/22/2008
(Original Publish Date: 9/1/2007)

Reference Models comprise information on best or common practices for reuse. However, they commonly originate from individual projects. Yet, project models are usually situational and often inconsistent due to a lack of expertise of the employees or the sheer complexity of the specification. Consequently, the transfer of these models into universal reference models is problematic at best. Standards are unified and generally accepted means of conducting or producing something. Thus, they provide a means to transport and interface knowledge of different parties. Since standards tend to be exhaustive, they commonly provide more than is needed for any given situation. We propose to adapt standards to provide a view that is better suited for a task at hand. In this way, standards can help to unify situational models and provide assistance for the transition to reference models.