Modeling Collaboration To Reach New HeightsModeling Collaboration To Reach New Heights

Conquest Inc., a consulting and systems-integration firm that specializes in dealing with federal agencies, the intelligence community, and large companies, has a proposal before the Office of Homeland Security to help the organization define response scenarios that require coordination among agencies and, ultimately, the private sector. "Everyone wants homeland security," says Carl Solomon, chief technology officer of Conquest, in Annapolis Junction, Md. "We have an opportunity perhaps now more than ever to cut through organizational barriers and change policies and processes, to bring in technical solutions to enable this robust knowledge sharing and collaboration."

Conquest's key to that collaboration is using application-modeling software. Modeling software helps organizations document their existing, separate systems with the goal of designing a common system that formalizes communication among various environments. "You can simulate ahead of time to see where you have organizational gaps and process failures and improve response times," Solomon says.

Conquest uses Popkin Software Inc.'s System Architect modeling product, which was upgraded to version 8.5 this fall, in its set of tools for building systems that work together by identifying business requirements, capturing the design, and then sharing that information with diverse developers. System Architect can create the blueprint for the technology by using object-oriented modeling techniques with the help of the Unified Modeling Language, an object-oriented analysis and design language from the Object Management Group, Solomon says. The software includes a module that facilitates the sharing and reuse of XML components and schema standards, is UML 1.4 compatible, supports UML 1.4 extensibility mechanisms with Web Application Extensions, and offers database synchronization to spot and correct discrepancies between a model and database.

Kathy Quirk, a senior analyst at the Hurwitz Group, says application modeling isn't new but it's still a highly specialized practice. "Modeling requires not only a technical element of having the right expertise to model applications, it also requires a change to the process that a company employs in building applications," she says. "It requires more planning up front prior to beginning coding."

Conquest says it's been working with government intelligence agencies since before Sept. 11 to map out how intelligence producers and consumers will do business in the future, but since that day the task has taken on heightened importance. Concern revolves around how data is formatted and transmitted now and how it will have to be handled in the future as they begin to share information. For instance, "one organization may have a code name 'XYZ' for Bin Laden, and another one may have a code name 'Mr. Green,'" Conquest co-founder and president Norm Snyder says. "We have to at least agree and identify what our symbols are so when we make an attempt to build a system we at least have a chance to get all the data right. Modeling begins when we identify all the pieces of information we can report on."

That type of systematic data inventory will help agencies work together. "Clearly, there's a role for modeling tools in helping capture your needs and your vision for the future," CTO Solomon says. "It's truly a focus on how we want things to be."