Building a Model First Before Writing Software for It

We have to basically build a model first before we can write software for it. That's the hard part. We walk into a domain that we are probably not that familiar with. I don't know anything about rocketry. Maybe that was a bad example. Another example might be a restaurant where you could mix anything together and any amounts, cook it for different ways and different amounts of time. But a chef invents a recipe and somehow has to take this refrigerator full of food and a kitchen full of cooking equipment and turn it into a discrete thing. The hard part is that other half, which is way bigger than half, but that's how I've cut it into two.