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Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations (DEMO)

What is the design and engineering methodology?

DEMO (Design and Engineering Methodology for Organizations) is a methodology in enterprise engineering. It is an enterprise modeling methodology for transaction modeling and analyzing and representing business processes. It was developed in the 1980s by Jan Dietz and others and is inspired by the language/action perspective

The purpose of design and engineering methodology (DEMO) is to ensure the quality, integrity, and safety of products by helping engineers model, design, and develop systems more effectively. Additionally, it helps to ensure that products are of high quality, meet safety requirements, and are easy to use.

DEMO is a methodology for designing, organizing, and linking organizations. The central concept is the "communicative action": communication is considered essential for the functioning of organizations. Agreements between employees, customers, and suppliers are indeed created to communicate. The same is true for the acceptance of the results supplied.

The DEMO methodology is based on the following principles:

  • The essence of an organization is that it consists of people with authority and responsibility to act and negotiate.
  • The modeling of business processes and information systems is a rational activity, which leads to uniformity.
  • Models should be understandable for all concerned.
  • Information should 'fit' with their users.

The DEMO methodology provides a coherent understanding of communication, information, action, and organization. The scope here is shifted from "Information Systems Engineering" to "Business Systems Engineering", with a clear understanding of both the information and the central organizations.

DEMO comprises a Way of Thinking (WoT), a Way of Modelling (WoM), and a Way of Working (WoW). The WoT consists of the theories that are discussed in part B of this book. The WoM consists of an integrated whole of four aspect models: the Cooperation model (CM), the Action Model (AM), the Process Model (PM), and the Fact Model (FM). The CM of a Scope of Interest (SoI) is the ontological model of its construction, thus of the identified transactor roles and the coordination structures among them.

Three structures are distinguished: the interaction structure, the interimpediment structure, and the interstriction structure. The AM of an SoI is the ontological model of its operation. For every internal actor role, it provides the rules that guide the role fillers in doing their work. The guidelines for responding to coordination events are called action rules (similar to business rules), and the ones for performing production acts are called work instructions. The PM of an SoI is the ontological model of the state space and the transition space of its coordination world. It contains the existing laws and occurrence laws for all internal and border transactor roles. The PM connects the CM and the AM of an SoI as far as coordination is concerned. The FM of an SoI is the ontological model of the state space and the transition space of its production world. It contains the existing laws and occurrence laws for all identified entity types, value types, property types, attributes types, and event types. The PM connects the CM and the AM of an SoI as far as production is concerned.

All four sub-models are expressed in the DEMO Specification Language (DEMOSL), which comprises diagrams, tables, and formal textual descriptions. For producing essential models of enterprises, the WoW of DEMO offers the OER method (Organizational Essence Revealing). It consists of a number of steps in which the four aspect models are produced, preferably in a spiral way.


See Also

Methodology


References