An Agile Methodology for Ontology Development

Abstract

Ontology is defined as an explicit specification of a shared conceptualization. Currently, ontology is used in semantic web, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, information systems, knowledge management, etc. The development of ontology involves a structural and logical complexity that is comparable to the development of software artifacts. Therefore, ontology building requires a methodology to ensure its reliability. In this context, there are several methodologies proposed for building ontologies. However, most of the existing methodologies failed to provide sufficient details for the activities and techniques employed in them with a defined ontology lifecycle. To build ontologies that are reliable, long lived and continually adapted, the ontology engineering (OE) should be supported by the software engineering (OE). But, SE was not initially meant to support the development of software artifacts such as ontologies. There is a significant gap between them in terms of popularity and maturity level. The aim of this paper is to bridge this gap by proposing an Agile Methodology for Ontology Development (AMOD). AMOD adopts the agile principles and practices in the ontology development. The final framework of AMOD fits the various ontology activities into the phases of the Scrum agile methodology. It has three phases: pre-game, development and post-game. AMOD was applied to develop ontology for software project time management. Additionally, a compliance analysis of different ontology methodologies with respect to the IEEE Standard was made. Results showed that AMOD resulted in 56% satisfaction for IEEE standard processes. This resembles 22% enhancement in the satisfaction against the other methodologies.

A Collaborative Framework Supporting Ontology Development Based on Agile and Scrum Model

“…As shown in Table 4, five related works and our work were measured by the PACS method, including XP.K [9], RapidOWL [10], AOSD [11], SAMOD [12], AMOD [13], and CD-OAM [18]. Each keyword in the mapping result was identified by the CL number regarding their purposed methodologies and frameworks.…”

“…To elucidate how we assess the related works, we give an explanation in the following example. The AMOD work [13] mentioned: "Configuration Management (CM): The goal of this activity is to record all the versions of the documentation and ontology code and to control the changes. Generally, CM of ontology includes four activities derived from the software engineering: configuration identification, configuration control, and configuration audits".…”

“…Recently, A. S. Abdelghany el al. [13] purposed AMOD (an Agile Methodology for Ontology Development) which is a methodology of ontology development from principles and activities of software development. This work also evaluated existing OE methodologies.…”

A Case Study in the Banking Sector: An Ontology for the Selection of Agile and Lean Software Development Methodologies

“…On the other hand, the ontology for requirements allows giving an intelligence support guide of the techniques to be used and an evaluation of the quality metrics of the traceability requirements. In essence, for [14,36] the ontologies developed in the DSA, are used as a medium to identify the changes between external clients and the SD equipment; allow permission to improve fundamental communication in the organization and the capacity to meet the requirements Meanwhile, the [1,21,34,37] risk management is focused and these were classified by levels. In this context, according to [17] the IEEE 1074 standard provides that the types of risks involved in organizations can be processed or activities, where each process derives an activity in the development of the Software.…”

“…In the field of software engineering, a growing advance has been perceived in research on methodologies and good practices of software development, which allows the efficient management and optimization of processes and resources, reduces conflicts in the assignment of routines and knowledge of the complexity of the projects [1,2]. In this context, software development methodologies such as Agile and Lean are implemented depending on the characteristics of an organization.…”