Life cycle ontology of software engineering

The article highlights the problem of presenting knowledge on the models of software life cycle, the importance of which can be explained by the rapid progress of software engineering methods, by the absence of a formally easily extensible knowledge model in this subject area, and by the fact that cycle time selection models and the proposed development methodology have a significant impact on the success of software projects. System analysis of the main types of software development methodologies, life cycle models and their phases has been carried out. The results of studying the representation of software life cycle models in the form of ontologies are presented. The ontology “Software development life cycle” (SDLC) has been developed. It is designed to represent knowledge about various models of the software life cycle, phases (stages) of the life cycle inherent in different models, and the possibility of describing the recurrence of phases. The ontology allows describing models both within predictive development methodologies (waterfall, incremental) and within agile development methodologies (Scrum, Kanban). Classes, properties and axioms of the ontology are described, on the basis of which it is possible to produce a formal logical inference. The SDLC ontology is developed on top of the Semantic Web formats (in OWL language), published in the public domain and presents a developing, easily extensible project. This can probably be used in the field of software development for practical or research purposes. There is also introduced the idea of a software shell that uses the presented ontology, which will allow, according to the given parameters, to choose the most appropriate methodology for the project, which will simplify the development process, avoid errors and reduce development time.