IRM is a requirements-oriented design method that facilitates modeling of ensemble-based systems. The main idea of IRM is to capture the high-level goals and requirements in terms of invariants (graphically represented as rounded rectangles), which describe the desired state of the system-to-be at every time instance. Invariants are to be maintained by the coordination of the different system components (graphically represented as rectangles).

As a design decision, top-level invariants are iteratively decomposed into more concrete sub-invariants, forming a decomposition graph with traceability of design decisions.

The decomposition process ends when the leaf invariants represent a detailed design of the system implementation – either in terms of local component behavior, corresponding to a component process (denoted by the “P” decoration of the invariant), or in terms of component interaction, corresponding to an ensemble (denoted by an “X” decoration).

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