Using Derived Connectors to simplify your models

Understanding complex models

As our models get larger and more complex, it gets harder to get new insights from them – there are jst too many elements and too many connections.

Model Expert Derived Relationships are a way to cut through that complexity, and deliver real insights, in a simple and understandable way.

The idea of a Derived Relationship is not new. It just says that if A is connected to B, and B to C, then we can say that there is a ‘derived relationship’ between A and C.

We do this purely to make things simpler for our consumers: to them, the existence of B might just be a distraction. It’s A and C they are interested in. This becomes even more important when there isn’t just A,B and C. If we have A,B,C,D and E, then understanding that A relates to E (and missing out the complxeity of B, C and D) becomes even more useful.

I this example, we have a fragment of an Archimate model, with a handful of different types of element. Can you say which Business Actors relate to which Application Components? And remember, here we have just a handful of each type of element. In reality, you will have 10s or 100s of examples at each level. And then the Business Actor / Applciation Component relationships are WAY too hard to work out by hand.

Seeing Derived Connectors

VisualisingDerived Connectors is as easy as dropping the elements into a diagram, and getting Model Expert to create any DCs which should exist. It will look at each element in the diagram, and each DR defition, and create the appropriate DCs.

This makes it easy for modeller to use the DRs which have been created, and easy for the consumer to see a much simpler picture model.