In this paper we present a review of the modeling of strain effects in nano-scale transistors and we describe different approaches that can be followed in order to include the effect of strain in both conventional and innovative devices. We first describe the mathematical framework for the modeling of strain and then we present two important case-studies where we have successfully emploied advanced modeling techniques in order to investigate the effect of strain in germanium-based MOSFETs and in InAs Tunnel-FETs.