Why We Build Meta Models

A meta model is simply a model - a picture - of what you intend to capture. It is 'meta' because it is not the captured information itself, but rather an illustration of the kinds of information that can be captured. We believe it is crucial to build a meta model at the start of each project we work on to illustrate the information that should be gathered and documented.

In order to store any artifacts in a repository, you must understand the kinds of artifacts you want to store, the attributes of the artifacts you want to store, and the possible relationships among the artifacts you want to store. Just as a database needs to have a schema, a meta model can be used as the conceptual schema for your project repository.

We've built many meta models for our clients. Here we illustrate two to show you how different they can be - even when the goal is the same - to capture requirements.

Metamodel 1. This meta model was built for the business analysis group at a large insurance company. In this group, the need was to analyze a business process and then to develop requirements for a system to support that process's needs.