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Using
Ventana Models
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Ventana® model remains vital and valuable over the long
term by maintaining strong connections to the organization.
Ventana provides clients with a variety of options for keeping
the model current with knowledge and data, making the model
easy and familiar to users, and supporting users' choices of
actions to increase performance. |
Connecting
the model to knowledge (Reality Check)
Client expectations about how changes in one factor will affect
other factors are documented using Vensim® Reality Check®.
Some Reality Check examples:
•
"Customers will only share information if they believe their
privacy is secure."
• "When service quality drops, our most profitable customers
leave faster than our less profitable customers."
• "Past a certain point, overstaffing will decrease
workforce morale and service quality."
Vensim's
patented Reality Check technology records these statements of expected
behavior in model libraries, in a format that allows automatic testing
of the model against each statement. Users can see visual output
confirming model conformance to expectations. If the model fails
a Reality Check, it is an immediate warning that there are unexpected
effects in the model relationships, indicating that the model, the
expectations, or both must be revised.
Reality Check effectively connects the model to organizational knowledge
in two ways. First, it provides an easy way for people to contribute
their expertise without having to know anything about the technical
details of the model. This knowledge is the basis for drafting initial
model relationships, and is then used for ongoing checks of model
behavior. Second, showing that the model behavior conforms to Reality
Check expectations is a powerful demonstration that the model's
internal dynamics work in accordance with the client's understanding
of their business. This demonstration is a valuable aid in establishing
model credibility. The set of Reality Check statements can continue
to grow with model use, powering ever-increasing model reliability,
providing an enduring archive of organizational knowledge, and facilitating
ongoing testing of the archive against new data and hypotheses.
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