Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

Object-oriented analysis (OOA), design (OOD) and programming (OOP) have revolutionized the software development process. The methodologies break down complex systems into an interacting set of objects, each object supporting specific actions and data and containing interfaces for communication and data exchange. Objects are classified and arranged in parent-child hierarchies, with child objects inheriting behaviors from parents. If well-designed, objects can be re-used in other development efforts, thereby reducing development cost and increasing reliability. An additional advantage to OOA and OOD is that objects can directly model business entities (e.g. a customer invoice) so that systems implementations closely model the actual business process.

Service Approach

• Use Object-Oriented Analysis techniques to analyze and model the business domain
• “Think in objects”
• Use the UML as a notation for capturing and communicating models
• Involve key business participants in a group process
• Serve as facilitators of the modeling process
• Consolidate and condense the information gained from the group process
• Create “living” models that are continually refined until stable and accurate
• Test resultant models with real world data to assure accuracy of the models