An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach

Software development usually follows well known process models and standards for development processes. However, these are usually diverse and described in natural language which complicates their automation, adaptivity and verification. The need for process formalisation has long been highlighted, and we have provided a formalisation and translation algorithm to that effect in earlier work. However, to systematically and faithfully formalise heterogeneous processes from different standards and process models, there is a need to utilise uniform concepts to underpin the formalisation process. Metamodels and ontologies have been explored recently to lay a foundation for structuring and expressing additional rigour to process formalisation. In this study, we develop an axiom based metamodel utilising powertype patterns as a conceptual framework to underpin homogeneous process formalisation. The advantage of an axiomatic and powertype based metamodel approach lies in its potential to determine the metamodel basic constituents and formalism as well as its extensibility and adaptability. We formalise the metamodel using ontologies while adopting use cases from ISO/IEC 29110 and ISO/IEC 24744 standards for metamodel illustrations. Ontology based process descriptions enable process automated verification and adaptivity capability through the use of ontology reasoning support engines.