The understanding is to be acquired and judged by those skilled in the art of the subject matter (so that the investment in the costs of acquisition and use of that understanding are moderated and appropriate). To the extent allowed by information technology, the understanding also is to be delegated to man-machine systems

In particular, the resulting technological system for understanding is to be applied to its own development, documentation, and communication to result in a systematic technology for understanding that can and will be applied to its own evolutionary refinement, as well as to societal needs of all kinds.

The old name (1958?) for the scientific philosophy that underlies the RSA/SADT/IDEFO modeling that is the subject of the "new look" at the Picture Language Modeling methodology that gives expression to Concept Engineering.

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 SADT is used for the project work.

Just three Formal Sayings and a few picture fragments

fully define the semantics of the SA Language:

The Model Definition: 

M models A to the extent that M correctly answers questions about A.

The most basic model is a proper name for A.  

Everything worth saying
About anything worth saying something about
Must be expressed in six-or-fewer pieces.

The pieces are the Structured Analysis Box:

with the Formal Saying: (for its semantics)

Under ¯ Control

Input ® is transformed into ® Output

by the Ý Mechanism

— which augments the inherited means

Notice that of these three sayings, only this one has graphics, but the following purely-graphical Formal Showings [TBD] complete the job!