Ontological modelling to support the planning of IS development processes: a position paper

IT projects are known for the high rate at which they fail. Past work by the authors has investigated the building of cognitive causal maps to find and represent what the participants in a project feel are factors that lead to project success or failure. It was found that while agreement can often be reached on the broad causes of failure, there tended to be differences about the precise nature of the identified factors (for example the exact meaning of 'inadequate resources'). The position paper proposes the use of ontological models to enrich and clarify causal maps with information about the classes of object in the real world to which they refer. This would facilitate more effective planning of new projects. An aspiration of the authors is to use the information generated by ontology-enriched causal maps to provide guidance on the tailoring of methodologies, particularly Agile ones, for specific projects.