SADT/IDEF0 provides an integrated approach to

· Performing systems analysis and design at all levels for systems comprising people, machines, materials, computers, and information of all varieties — the entire enterprise

· Producing documentation concurrent with development

· Communicating by analysts, designers, users, managers

· Allowing coalition consensus to be achieved not by agreeing to disagree, but by common shared understanding

· Ensuring quality and configuration control via continuous review and approval

· Managing large and complex projects using quantitative and qualitative measures of progress

For teams to work effectively there must be

· Clear divisions of the problem

· Well-defined interfaces

· A way to integrate and interrelate their work

· A common language for communication

· Precise records of decisions

· Visibility

People fulfill various roles in the process:

· Experts with deep domain knowledge in technical, management, marketing, and business areas.

· Authors who are trained to interview experts and express the results in well—structured models of the subject matter.

· Readers, who are trained in the reading rules for the models, including how to make terse comments on their correctness and effectiveness in communicating the subject matter. (Readers may be other authors, or experts, managers, and executives.)

· Technical and Management Review Committees spanning the full range of required expertise and responsibility to monitor (as Readers) and approve project progress and results.

· Project Librarian who circulates Reader Kits in the Reader/ Author Cycle, and maintains the project archives of all results and decisions. 

Often a Project Model is used to specify and manage the project itself, making the roles and rules explicit, in the same way that IDEF0 is used for the project work.