Like I said their are many thoughts on the subject. I follow Alistair Cockburn's ideas on the subject and I have found that Jim Highsmith and many other methodologists agree.
The concept is the following:
Let me start with a direct quote from Alistair Cockburn's "Lightening your Methodology" presentation:
Methodology = "related methods or techniques"
(Method ~ technique = "systematic procedure")
Heres a quote from Ralph Hodgson
"Methodology is a social construction"
The following are known by the "Agile Alliance" as Agile Methodologies:
Extreme Programming - Kent Beck
Crystal Method - Alistair Cockburn
Lean Development - Bob Charette
SCRUM-K. Schwaber, J. Sutherland
Adaptive Software Dev - Jim Highsmith
Even with all this said, I hear authors such as Jim Highsmith exchanging the
word Method with Methodology.
A lot of English don't like to use the term method to mean technique, but I believe it is becoming more common.
If you're studying for a
test, I'd recommended using Method to mean process.
But, if you're interested in what some seems to be the new trend, you'll think of a method as a technique, as in a small piece of a methodology. It might be incorrect to say UML is a method and maybe more accurate to say conceptual modeling is a method and UML is the tool, but it's clear that the word methodology means process.
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David Roberts - SCJP2,MCP