Developing Industrial Case–Based Reasoning Applications: The INRECA Methodology

Abstract • communication, i.e., formal and informal communica-tion among members of the development team, and This paper presents an overview of the INRECA methodology for building and maintaining Case-Based Reasoning applications. It is based on the experience factory and the software process modeling approach from software engineering. CBR development experience is documented us-ing software process models and stored in differ-ent levels of generality in a three-layered experi-ence base. The current INRECA experience base contains three so-called recipes, each of which describes the development of one kind of CBR application. The INRECA methodology has been used for developing several new CBR applica-tions and significant benefits in terms of produc-tivity, quality, communication, and management decision making could be identified. • management decision making, e.g., planning, resource allocation, and monitoring [Bergmann et al. 1997]. Currently, there are several activities with the goal of establishing a methodology for building case-based rea-soning applications. Contributions can be found in books on CBR [Kolodner 1993, chapter 15; Wess 1995, chapter 6] and in papers collecting the experience of people who have successfully developed CBR applications (e.g. [Ki-tano and Shimazu 1996, Lewis 1995; Bartsch-Spörl 1996a; Curet and Jackson 1996]); most valuable experi-ence-based contributions arose from projects where methodology development was explicitly included as a project task, like INRECA1 [Althoff, Wess et al. 1995