Participatory modeling
Participatory modeling is an approach which is a branch of the general field of conceptual modeling. It's specialisation is aimed towards involvement of a large number of people.
Benefits obtained from this type of modeling is numerous, depending on the application area. In particular participatory modeling can give a high degree of ownership and motivation towards change for the people involved in the modeling process. There exists two major approaches which themselves provide highly different goals for the modeling; Continuous modeling and conference modeling.
Continuous modeling
Continuous modeling focus on the end-user being the active modeler. This can be incorporated into an adaptable, context-sensitive, "intelligent" system, which is suited to the end-user on an individual level, this combination is often termed model generated workplaces or model generated user environments.
The idea is that the end-user potentially has the greatest actual domain knowledge and thus the organization as a whole benefits by obtaining and externalize this knowledge.
Conference modeling
Conference modeling is an approach where the goal often is of a more social kind, such as motivating, change management, externalization of knowledge and so on. The idea is to involve a large number of diversified people from the domain in question. Then the modeling process is performed in participation among them during a fixed period of time.