Any project manager or technical leader considering investing precious time and money in new technology should perform technical and business due diligence prior to choosing that technology. As with any new technology, it is sometimes difficult to separate vaporware technology from bona fide technology, so caveat emptor applies here as elsewhere. (Stated otherwise: "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered, and sheep get sheared.")

You should evaluate MDE technologies if ...

Your organization should perform a cost-benefit analysis of Model-Driven Engineering technologies if it has one or more of the following problems:

• Chaotic system development processes.
  • If your software and systems engineering processes are ad hoc, chaotic, and unpredictable, then MDE can help standardize process workflows and improve their rigor and reproducibility.
• Low system quality is impacting your bottom line.
  • If your software-intensive system products are error-prone or fail to satisfy system requirements, then MDE can help you identify errors earlier in your System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and automate Validation & Verification so that you "build the right system and build the system right".
• System architecture is out of control.
  • If your software intensive systems are monotonically increasing in complexity and no individual fully understands how they work, then MDE can help you capture your system architectures in a standard manner that can be understood by multiple system stakeholders, ranging from customers and operators to analysts (systems engineers) and designers (software engineers).
• Technology IP is at risk.
  • If most of your technology Intellectual Property (IP) is not written down and resides in the neurons of senior technologists who will be retiring in the next N years, where N is 5 or less, then MDE can help you capture your technology IP in a standardized manner that can be protected, preserved, and potentially patented.

If your organization is large and you do not have one or more of the problems cited above, you are to be congratulated as being an exception to the general case. However, if your organization is mortal and you have one or more of the problems cited above, you should exercise healthy skepticism when evaluating MDE technologies.

If you are clueless about MDE then ...

If you are clueless about what MDE technologies are, and how they can help your organization, then the first thing you need to do is to become clued. To be more specific, you first need to learn how to differentiate between MDE and non-MDE approaches. If you fail to do this, you will be prey to the Muddle-Driven Marketecture hype propagated by modeling tool vendors who promise business nirvana ("better, faster, cheaper") systems if you buy their "silver bullet" modeling tools with their "magic bullet" modeling languages (UML, SysML, BPMN, MumbleML). If you are naive or dumb enough to fall for this marketecture, then you likely deserve to squander your technology budget and blow your project schedule without significant Return-On-Investment (ROI).

How can you get become quickly and efficiently clued about MDE? It should be obvious that you cannot depend upon a modeling tool vendor for this, since they tend to drink their own marketecture kool-aid and are biased toward their silver bullet solutions. Consequently, we recommend engaging tool vendor neutral training or consulting services to help you learn the benefits and pitfalls of MDE technologies.

If you want an executive briefing regarding the benefits and pitfalls of MDE technologies, we recommend our Muddle-Driven Marketecture or Model-Driven Tarchitecture? seminar, which usually lasts between 1-4 hours, and we selectively present to clients and conferences. If you want to determine a comprehensive MDE strategy regarding modeling languages, tools, frameworks, and processes, we recommend our Model-based Architecture & Process Strategy™ (MAPS) workshop, which usually lasts between 3-5 days, and which we can customize to address your team and project requirements.

If you are clued about MDE, but skeptical, then ...

If you are clued about the benefits MDE technologies, but are skeptical about its practical application, then we encourage you to maintain your skepticism. In fact, not only our Model-based Architecture & Process Strategy™ (MAPS) workshop, but all of our workshops encourage healthy skepticism as part of the MDE technology transfer process. It facilitates MDE learning process, and ensures that MDE technology can be practically applied to your problem domain.

If you would like more information about our our Model-based Architecture & Process Strategy™ workshops or Muddle-Driven Marketecture or Model-Driven Tarchitecture? seminars, please call us or email us.