Including Sparx EA Model Provenance

It’s a strange word to find in a modelling blog. We usually think about the ‘provenance‘ of an antique or a painting as telling us where it came from and something about it’s story.

So maybe it’s not so strange that we’d like to know the provenance of our model information:

• Where did it come from?
• Who has reviewed or approved it ?

..and most importantly..

• why does it look the way it does ?

Think for a moment how you would explain a bit of your model to someone else, if you were both stood at the same whiteboard.

What you would NOT do is tell them to wait whilst you draw up a big diagram, than start to explain it all (see ‘Telling a Story’).

You’d draw a bit, explain a bit, and I expect you’d also be saying things like ‘we decided to do it this way because...’ or ‘..there are lots of ways to do this, and we chose this one because of ...”.

These are all statements about the provenance of the model. Not just explaining the ‘what there is‘ but more ‘why it is the way it is‘.

Practicalities

Capturing provenance has a potential impact on your model, so we need to think a little before doing this. Here are some suggested implementations ideas:

• Decide on what a decision looks like (special kind of class, artifact or other – depends on what your modelling tool allows)
• Make it look different from other stuff, so nobody thinks these are part of the model content
• I also suggest linking them to other model elements using an obviously different line style/color, just to emphasize that these are just notes.
• To encourage use of these ‘decision’ elements, how about giving special awards (buns, coffee) to modelers who add them to their models. More of them would get a higher quality score when the model is reviewed. A bit like comments in code (don’t get me started on that….)