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OpenFrame Technologies is proficient in modeling of business systems. More important, we see problems repeat themselves. Frequently we find that many aspects of a project revisit problems we have faced before. That experience allows us to reuse models we have built before, improve them, and adapt them to new demands.
We believe a difference between analysis and design still exists, but it is increasingly becoming one of emphasis. When doing analysis we are trying to
understand the problem. To our mind, this is not just listing requirements in business cases. Business cases are a valuable, if not essential, part of system
design, but capturing them is not the end of analysis. Analysis also involves looking behind the surface requirements to come up with a mental model of what is going on in the problem.
It is important to remember that a conceptual model is a human artifact - it represents a model of the real world, a model created by human beings. Models are effective in analysis terms because they allow us to better understand what happens in the real world.
Also, organizational analyst can use more than one model. For example, for a ball game simulation a Newtonian or Einsteinian model could be used. We could argue that the Einsteinian model would be more correct because it takes into account changes of mass due to the speed the balls are traveling and is thus more precise. The analyst would almost certainly prefer the Newtonian model, however, because the speeds would be so low that they would make a negligible difference to the simulation but would involve a lot of extra complexity. This illustrates an important principle: There is no right or wrong model, merely one that is more useful for the job at hand.
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