Ontology for Systems Development

Software-intensive information systems have a major impact on our lives, both privately and professionally. Development of these systems is a complex activity that requires the involvement of people with di®erent competences and skills. Even though software-intensive systems have been developed since the 1960s, the success rate is still low. A major hindrance to successful system development projects is the lack of consistent terminology. Since systems development is a collaborative activity, involving not only systems developers but also domain experts and user representatives, the understanding of each other is a prerequisite for an e®ective collaboration. The aim of this paper is to explore and present de ̄nitions, dependencies, and relationships of the most fundamental concepts in systems development in the form of an ontology. The ontology consists of four categories of concepts: General concepts, Description concepts, Realization concepts, and Appearance concepts. The two core concepts in the ontology are Systems and Systems development.