The conceptual modeling approach helps an organization with a strong governance culture to develop a detailed and semantically rich set of UML conceptual models that describe a system. Architects can generate code from these models and regenerate as the model evolves.
After creating the detailed class-level model using UML, the architect can apply a transformation directly to this conceptual model to generate the code structure, or in many cases the actual compiling code, for an application. The developer then develops the implementation within the structural guidelines of the new code model by visually editing the code in UML notational diagrams, or by using a code editor.
If the structure of the code model must be modified, or if a developer has a concern with the high-level design of the system, the architect can review the proposed change and implement it directly in the UML model. The UML model can be seen as the master model because it continuously evolves throughout the development process. When the architect reapplies the UML model transformation, the existing code is overwritten, and the architect takes precautions to not overwrite the detailed work of the developer.
In this workflow, the architect generates the design aspects of one or more applications, which leaves little potential for hand-coding activities to alter something that is architecturally significant or that would violate a design contract.