I always learn more from failure than from success.  In that spirit, I'll share a (small) failure with you In my last post ( Working in the dark ), I mentioned that I would be discussing the metamodel underlying all the things we do in operating Microsoft IT.  In effect, I'm following the precepts of Domain Driven Design , and applying those concepts to the act of software development in an IT setting, from planning through requirements, development through deployment, operations through retirement.  I don't know if I will end up with a federated domain model or a single unified model.  That depends on a lot of things.  In the spirit of agile: I forge ahead One of the core principles of my effort, first and foremost, is "Leverage before build" which is a fancy way of saying "don't invent what already exists."  That implies that I will look to the models that exist.  One of them is the Common Information Model (CIM) from the Distributed Management Task Force.    To leverage the work of the DMTF, I want to start with their highest level information model (conceptual level).  From the concepts, I can understand the classes.  I've used this process before, and it works.  To the best of my knowledge, this is the process used by DDD I opened the CIM from DMTF expecting to find an Information model.  After all, the name of their effort was "Common Information Model."  And I found out that my nice little plan was not going to work.. because the DMTF didn't publish an information model.  They published a detailed class model