Högskolan i Skövde

It is widely recognised that pre-usage evaluation of CASE-tools is difficult, but of increasing importance to organisations. One critical issue is the development of a framework for evaluation which genuinely represents company requirements.

Recently, a method for developing evaluation frameworks has been described in the literature. The method originators claim that it addresses a number of the weaknesses apparent in earlier approaches, citing a number of field studies with the method. However, none of these field studies tests whether the method scales to full framework development within a large organisation. In this paper we briefly review the method, and then report on a field study which used it in a large organisation. Emphasis is placed on the application of the method in the company setting, and on the issues involved in handling the large volumes of data generated. Overall, we conclude that the method does scale. Further, the resulting framework met with considerable interest amongst company stakeholders.