Conceptual modeling

Conceptual modeling is a basic craft shared by requirements analysts, process designers, IT architects, and object-oriented programmers.

Hectic office situations and project deadlines often mean that conceptual models are not as good as they could be. Secretly, late at night, tinkering away in the privacy of their garden shed, professionals around the world dream of the perfect, Platonic model for their project: a conceptual heaven.

At a time of tight budgets and short-cycled, agile development, such dreams appear old-fashioned and impractical. They are not: human organizations are complex affairs, and to support them with quality business software, we need carefully designed models to understand them – just like we need a model of an aircraft in order to build one. In many ways, modelling human organizations is harder than engineering: we have to deal with the quirks and oddities of human language and behavior.

This site is devoted to conceptual modeling, with a special interest in natural business language. As a starting point, it draws sound principles and standardization  from SBVR, the formal specification published by the Object Management Group (OMG).

SBVR

NATURAL LANGUAGE

Natural business language is accepted as a vehicle at the start of a requirements process, but is often replaced in design models and technical models by more formal representations. This is unfortunate: controlled natural language is a rich source of business knowledge at all stages.