Systems modeling orsystem modeling is theinterdisciplinary study of the use ofmodels to conceptualize and constructsystems inbusiness andIT development.[2]
A common type of systems modeling isfunction modeling, with specific techniques such as theFunctional Flow Block Diagram andIDEF0. These models can be extended usingfunctional decomposition, and can be linked torequirements models for further systems partition.
Contrasting the functional modeling, another type of systems modeling isarchitectural modeling which uses thesystems architecture to conceptually model thestructure,behavior, and moreviews of a system.
TheBusiness Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a workflow, can also be considered to be a systems modeling language.
In business and IT development the term "systems modeling" has multiple meanings. It can relate to:
As a field of study systems modeling has emerged with the development ofsystem theory andsystems sciences.
As a type ofmodeling systems modeling is based onsystems thinking and the systems approach. In business and IT systems modeling contrasts other approaches such as:
In "Methodology for Creating Business Knowledge" (1997)Arbnor andBjerke the systems approach (systems modeling) was considered to be one of the three basic methodological approaches for gaining business knowledge, beside the analytical approach and the actor's approach (agent based modeling).[3]
The function model originates in the 1950s, after in the first half of the 20th century other types of management diagrams had already been developed. The first knownGantt chart was developed in 1896 byKarol Adamiecki, who called it aharmonogram. Because Adamiecki did not publish his chart until 1931 - and in any case his works were published in either Polish or Russian, languages not popular inthe West - the chart now bears the name ofHenry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed his chart around the years 1910-1915 and popularized it in the West.[4] One of the first well defined function models, was theFunctional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) developed by the defense-relatedTRW Incorporated in the 1950s.[5] In the 1960s it was exploited by theNASA to visualize the time sequence of events in a space systems and flight missions.[6] It is further widely used in classicalsystems engineering to show the order of execution of system functions.[7]
One of the earliest pioneering works ininformation systems modeling[8] has been done by Young and Kent (1958), who argued:
They aimed for a precise and abstract way of specifying the informational and time characteristics of adata processing problem, and wanted to create a notation that should enable theanalyst to organize the problem around any piece ofhardware. Their efforts was not so much focused on independent systems analysis, but on creating abstract specification and invariant basis for designing different alternative implementations using different hardware components.[8]
A next step in IS modeling was taken byCODASYL, an IT industry consortium formed in 1959, who essentially aimed at the same thing as Young and Kent: the development of "a proper structure for machine independent problem definition language, at the system level of data processing". This led to the development of a specific ISinformation algebra.[8]
In business and IT development systems are modeled with different scopes and scales of complexity, such as:
Further more likesystems thinking, systems modeling in can be divided into:
And all other specific types of systems modeling, such as form examplecomplex systems modeling,dynamical systems modeling, andcritical systems modeling.
