Continuous Management of Consistency and Inconsistencies in Multi-Model Development: A Conceptual Response to the ICMM 2026 Challenge

In Model‑Driven Development (MDD), managing consistency between models is a persistent challenge that is strongly influenced by stakeholder priorities, as maintaining consistency often involves trade-offs among competing concerns. This paper contributes to the (In-)Consistency Management in Modeling Challenge 2026 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18599404) by discussing how the Vitruvius framework can support consistency preservation. We review the concepts provided by Vitruvius; particularly the Virtual Single Underlying Model (V-SUM) and Views. V-SUM enables multiple, potentially inconsistent internal models to be presented externally as a single coherent model, effectively hiding internal inconsistencies from users. Views further allow users to focus selectively on the elements that are relevant to specific tasks, rather than dealing with the full complexity of all model artifacts.

We explain how these concepts help address three key aspects of inconsistency management:
1) Time‑related aspects, where inconsistencies arise due to the evolution of models over time; 2) Artifact‑related aspects, which is due to the diversity of dimensions or concerns represented within different modeling artifacts; and 3) Skill‑related aspects, which result from the varying perspectives, expertise, and responsibilities of different stakeholders and roles. ... mehrFinally, we outline several open questions and research directions that should be explored in future work.