Metaparadigm's adventures: Incorporating design situations in software process design

Abstract Our practical experiences and theoretical research in the field of software design and its management have resulted in the conclusion that to enable successful software system design in any design situation we must first design an appropriate design paradigm. This activity was called the metadesign and a metadesign paradigm a metaparadigm. Following recent scientific findings we decided that a metaparadigm should be pluralistic, useful, systemic, easy to use and recursivelly adaptable (recursive adaptability states that a metaparadigm must be an iterative learning system accumulating new knowledge about metadesign, software system design and related). It should be composed out of a suitable framework, theory and a metadesign methodology and philosophy. Currently we have designated the idea of a process as the framework, the Checklands Soft System Methodology as the methodology and philosophy, and the process formalization (metamodeling) as the theory.