[Sigia-l] Diagraming Tools for IA [was: visio feature improvements]

[John O'Donovan]

> John-
>
> Very interesting and helpful post.  Can you recommend any specific CASE
> tools that you have had a favourable experience with? Any that you would
> not recommend?
>

Thanks Gregg - I've done a summary below.

If you have not used one before I would suggest just using them for
requirements and use cases first and then go from there. The biggest hurdle
is that these tools still have a bias for the systems analyst / systems
designer / technical architect point of view rather than an IA point of
view, and so can be a bit intimidating, but it is up to you to use them in
the way that most benefits you. There are also specific tools available for
requirements management if that is your focus.

I would say there is definitely room in the market place for a more
lightweight CASE tool, as the market leaders have become complex
applications. This makes it quite a jump from something like Visio or
Omnigraffle to something like System Architect especially if your focus is
front end design. The benefits are enormous though and if you are going to
take the leap into Enterprise Information Architectures and Inter-Enterprise
Information Architectures it's the way to go.

There are a number of CASE tools worth looking at (we use System Architect
and Rational - I also use Enterprise Architect as a lightweight choice).

Enterprise Architect is a good all round tool and relatively inexpensive (I
have a soft spot for this tool as it is playing with the big boys and giving
them a run for their money...). It also has some good import / export
features and lots of predefined UI object types for building lo-fi
wireframes, which it can export as clickable HTML. The GUI can be a bit
fiddly but it stores, links and cross references all the information entered
into it very well.
What it is:
http://www.sparxsystems.com/ea.htm
How to use it in a nutshell:
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/UML_Tutorial2.htm

System Architect is for organisational modelling and heavy duty work
http://www.popkin.com/products/system_architect.htm
SA can scale right up to model a whole corporation and perform critical path
analysis on business processes. This supports the decision chain at the
programme
management, benefits management, consulting level. This has a killer feature
which is
the ability to draw your own working process graphically (they call it a
framework)
and then link this to the deliverables. This makes it really easy to
overlay your own working practices onto the way users access and monitor
the data in the system.
http://www.popkin.com/products/system_architect/frameworks.htm)

Rational Rose (recently bought by IBM) is a good toolset but is sort of
locked into the Rational Unified Process for systems design. This is
currently a proprietary design methodology. The level of detail is
astounding though as it provides you with templates for everything from user
interviews to test plans.
Start here, but it is a complex set of tools...
http://www.rational.com/products/astudio/index.jsp

TogetherSoft Control Centre (recently bought by Borland to make their
development tools more integrated).
Very good end to end tool and noted for having a particularly good link
between the design and the developers - for example, if your development
team use Java then this tool has one of the best environments for them to
work in directly, with their deliverables linked well to the original
designs.
http://www.borland.com/together/index.html

Cheers,

jod