Is there unified methods for system modeling?

Question

There are tons of courses and tutorials about specific technologies and programming languages such as: JS, HTML, Python, etc.

However, the field of system analysis lacks the same attention that technologies enjoy.

Is there unified methods for system analysis/modeling?

What if I need to model an accounting system for a specific business, it there any modeling techniques that can describe the system?

I have found a method called REA (Resources, Events, Agents) but doesn't seem widely accepted and practiced.

Answer 1

There is no universal method because there is no universal system. Different analysis methods focus on different aspects of a system, provide different perspectives. You may need several for a complete picture and some may be utterly meaningless to a particular system because they just do not apply.

Is your system heavy on data? Is it heavy on behavior? Is it heavy on usage? Is it heavy on timing?

You need to understand what is hard about your system and then choose a number of appropriate ways to model it.

Answer 2

There have been attempts, but these have imo become overly complicated and provide little value but rather massive overheads and bureaucracy, such as the classic SSADM and the slightly more modern framework provided by omg.org with UML. The latter is certainly worth looking into, at least to use some of the models.

The IIBA do certainly speak about it, but again, for me it's far too bureaucratic.

Certainly worth checking out are these: - https://www.eventstorming.com/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design And possibly (but not technical) this: - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mapping-Experiences-Creating-Journeys-Blueprints/dp/1491923539

The teams I work with usually start with some experience mapping / event storming to get to needs/jobs/features and then may use class / sequence diagrams to quickly illustrate implementation aspects, but really they quite quickly code and evolve the code as they go (and this for complex system across government and medical industry). Ultimately, well documented and structured code is much better than documentation...