Merise is a general-purpose modeling

General-purpose modeling

General-purpose modeling is the systematic use of a general-purpose modeling language to represent the various facets of an object or a system...

 methodology in the field of information systems development, software engineering

Software engineering

Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

 and project management

Project management

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...

. First introduced in the early 1980s, it was widely used in France, and was developed and refined to the point where most large French governmental, commercial and industrial organizations had adopted it as their standard methodology.

Merise proceeds to separate treatment of data and processes, where the data view is modelled in three stages - from conceptual, and logical, through to physical. Similarly, the process-oriented view passes through the three stages of conceptual, organizational and operational. These stages in the modelling process are paralleled by the stages of the life cycle: strategic planning, preliminary study, detailed study, development, implementation and maintenance.