PRINCIPAL | RUNNING CODE PRODUCTIONS
Dr Ashley Aitken
Dr Ashley Aitken is a business analyst, software engineer, and academic with over 25 years’ experience across enterprise IT, innovation, and professional training. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and specialises in business analysis, enterprise software development, startups & corporation innovation, and professional training. Ashley leads two consultancies: Running Code Productions (software development & professional training) and Innovately.com.au (Lean Startup & Customer Development). A seasoned practitioner and global trainer, he has delivered award-winning education, founded multiple startups, and supported organisations like Apple, IBM, Woodside, and the WA Government. Ashley is currently the Lead BA for Western Power’s DSO Technology area and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Murdoch University.
Presentation: Beyond Arrows and Boxes: Event Modelling for Modern Business Analysis
As our information systems grow more distributed and interconnected, the diagrams we’ve relied on, especially sequence diagrams, begin to break down. Originally designed for synchronous, object-oriented communication, sequence diagrams often mislead us when applied to modern architectures. What do those arrows really mean in a world of APIs, message queues, eventual consistency, and asynchronous operations?
In this presentation, Dr Aitken will reframe how Business Analysts should think about system interactions. We’ll explore a powerful, technology-independent way of modelling systems using the concepts of Commands, Queries, and Events, a foundation for Event Modelling and Event-Driven Architectures (and CQRS). You’ll learn why these patterns are better suited for distributed systems, and how they offer clarity in representing business integration, integration flows, and user interactions.
This isn’t just about drawing better diagrams, it’s about a mindset shift in logical system design. Whether you’re modelling user interactions, system integrations, or business applications, understanding these concepts will equip you to build more adaptable, scalable, and robust systems going forward.
If you’re still modelling with methods rooted in the last era of logical system design, it’s time to level up. Join Ashley to see and hear where system modelling is heading, and how you, as a Business Analyst, can lead the way in your organisation.