What can happen without model governance?
A blog entry titled “Model and Pasta” has inspired me to ask: What can happen without model governance?
This may happen: The right means are used for the wrong purpose, and the result is a disaster.
I have already discussed, that the modeling purpose does determine the outcome of a modeling exercise.
So what happens, if you use the right modeling language for the wrong purpose? It ends up in spaghetti models.
If you try to use a BPMN model for the purpose of model driven development – as mentioned in the blog (i.e. to generate coding) – for a business process with many special cases, then the result can be a spaghetti model. But this is not because BPMN is not good, it is because the right means for the wrong purpose has been used.
What is the level of detail that should be modeled? By which modeling technique it should be modeled? These difficult questions are best solved within the scope of a model governance process. As soon as a model become a subsitute for coding only – i.e. it is not human readable any more – it misses it’s purpose. Then it would be better to code. A governance process makes sure, that it is still human readable.
Furthermore it needs to be considered, that BPMN is not the only modeling language in the world and should not be used for purposes, where other means are better. I will elaborate on this later.
