IDEF6

IDEF6 or Integrated Definition for Design Rationale Capture is a method to facilitate the acquisition, representation, and manipulation of the design rationale used in the development of enterprise systems. This method, that wants to define the motives that drive the decision-making process, is still in development.Rationale is the reason, justification, underlying motivation, or excuse that moved the designer to select a particular strategy or design feature. More simply, rationale is interpreted as the answer to the question, “Why is this design being done in this manner?” Most design methods focus on what the design is (i.e., on the final product, rather than why the design is the way it is).

IDEF6 is part of the IDEF family of modeling languages in the field of systems and software engineering.

When explicitly captured, design rationale typically exists in the form of unstructured textual comments. In addition to making it difficult, if not impossible to find relevant information on demand, lack of a structured method for organizing and providing completeness criteria for design rationale capture makes it unlikely that important information will be documented. Unlike design methods which serve to document WHAT a design is (Design Specification), the IDEF6 Design Rationale Capture Method is targeted at capturing:

IDEF6 was intended to be a method with the representational capability to capture information system design rationale and associate that rationale with the design models and documentation for the end system. Thus, IDEF6 attempts to capture the logic underlying the decisions contributing to, or resulting in, the final design. The explicit capture of design rationale serves to help avoid repeating past mistakes, provides a direct means for determining the impact of proposed design changes, forces the explicit statement of goals and assumptions, and aids in the communication of final system specifications.

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