Achieving Consistency of Conceptual Models: Is Object-Oriented Analysis That Simple?

Several authors have recently indicated an urgent need for re-evaluation and validation of the various software engineering abstraction techniques, and object orientation in particular. This paper presents three questionable practices and one promising direction with respect to achieving consistent analysis models. This work is based on five years of observation of more than 700 students working on software requirements specifications of a small telephone exchange and a related accounts management system. The practices will be investigated empirically in the first author's Ph.D. research