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IDEF: Information Definition Exchange Format

IDEF is being used in this Best Practice to document Process and index Resources, Skills, and Case Histories. IDEF is a U.S. Air Force acronym for ICAM Definition Exchange Format. ICAM is an acronym for Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing. IDEF loosly translates as the Information Definition Exchange Format. It is the basis for CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tools, and as such is widely available as a modeling language. IDEF-0 is Activity Modeling, and is the basis for building this Process Model of Well Planning Process and Workflow. IDEF-0 is based on ICOMs, where ICOM is an acronym for Input, Controls, Outputs, and Mechanisms, as shown below:

Each box in an IDEF-0 ICOM defines an activity as a verb or verb phrase. The Input, Control, Output, and Mechanism arrows are nouns or noun phrases. IDEF-1X reverses this and places the nouns or noun phrases in the boxes and the verbs or verb phrases as the connecting lines in what is refered to as an E-R (Entity-Relationship) Diagram. There are tools that automatically translate between IDEF-0, IDEF1X (the database model), IDEF2 (simulation), IDEF-3 (work flow or IDEF-0 with Boolean logic), and higher levels of IDEF. The author has used IDEF-Design, BPWIN and ERWIN (Business Process for Windows and Entity-Relationship Modeling for Windows), and Architect 2001 from Popkin. Archtect 2001 is the best overall solution because it allows automatic translation, including to HTML files. This work was done using IDEF-Design, capturing screens, and wrapping the screen captures with HTML code.

IDEF is a formal language developed for the U.S. Military. Once a model is built, there are several relationships inherent in the model. Each decomposed ICOM has a hierarchial relationship within the whole. This tree structure of verbs and verb phrases can automatically be displayed as a tree, an outline, or the IDEF standard Node Tree. The Node Tree below describes how to form an Agile Virtual Team:

Well Planning Definition
Best Practice Definition
Real-Time Well Execution
Visualization Tools Definition
Integration Definition

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