=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-404/paper-8
|storemode=property
|title=Semantic Based Project Management
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-404/Paper7.pdf
|volume=Vol-404
}}
==Semantic Based Project Management==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-404/Paper7.pdf
Semantic based Project Management
Birgit Dippelreiter
Vienna University of Technology
Favoritenstrasse 9-11
A-1040 Wien
+43 (0)1 58801-18881
dippelreiter@ec.tuwien.ac.at
ABSTRACT By combining semantic technologies and PM systems, a reduction
In the past and still today, projects miss their goals or are of the administration effort and an improved control of the
cancelled because of overruns in time and budget. Reasons for progress of a project seem possible. Introducing semantic
their failure are that information often gets lost or that it is hard to technologies, such as ontologies, semantic annotation of content
remember how and where to find the needed information. and semantic search open up new ways of delivering the needed
insight and experience of past projects. Relevant information of
To improve this situation it is intended to enhance a project former projects is consolidated in a knowledge base. With the use
management system with semantic technologies, such as of ontologies project members can search for concepts and do not
ontologies and semantic search. For access via client this project have to search for exact keywords. Furthermore, different
management system will enhance a fat-client on the Semantic information items are set in relationship which simplifies and
Desktop system. The usage of this semantically enhanced project optimises the search process. All information items for a project
management system will be demonstrated by a prototype. are on one platform or at least a relationship exists between the
project data on a desktop and on the platform related to a project.
Categories and Subject Descriptors With the availability of the knowledge of already finished,
H.3.2 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Storage running and planned projects the probability to deliver a project in
time, in budget and with the specified capabilities is improved.
For a better understanding what the expected added value of this
General Terms
PhD topic is, a small Use Case is given in the following:
Management
There is a large company, which has lots of different (past,
current and future) projects. Very often, new projects are similar
Keywords to already finished ones or problems might appear in current
Project Management, Semantic technologies, ontologies,
projects, which were already solved in similar projects in the past.
Semantic Desktop
In those cases, it is necessary to look up again the information,
such as documents, contact information or statements of costs of
1. INTRODUCTION those finished projects.
In the past and still today, projects miss their goals or are A project member of a big company is involved in a project
cancelled because of overruns in time and budget. Reasons for where some problems have appeared. This person remembers that
their failure are that information often gets lost or that it is hard to similar problems arose in another project a few years ago. To save
remember how and where to find the needed information. money and time he wants to get the information of this project
The idea to enhance project management systems with semantic and therefore searches for information about it. But he doesn’t
technologies enables for example a better search and reuse of know the exact terms to get the description of how the problem
already existing data. Thus it reduces time and costs and in was solved in the last project, the name of the person who solved
addition, it reduces the effort of project management and it or wrote the documentation. Current project management tools
increases the probability of project success. only allow to search for keywords, different information items,
and full text search or maybe in time categories. Hence, the
To enable a better comprehension of this topic chapter two search will be quiet difficult and of course will need time.
specifies the research problem and the benefit and chapter three
the economic relevance. Chapter four describes the state-of-the- The goal of this PhD is to tackle this problem. The user can
art of current Project Management and Semantic Desktop systems search for the name of the producer of the document, the creation
and the innovation of this topic. The proposed technical solution date, the milestone in which the document is part of, an email
will be explained in chapter five, while chapter six gives an where the document is attached or for a name of a project
overview of the future work. Last but not least chapter seven member. The result of this search is presented as an ontology tree
gives an overview of the scientific contributions and chapter eight that makes it possible to navigate through the possible results
gives a short conclusion of this PhD thesis. until the needed information is found. A normal listing of
documents or information items is included in addition, but the
main issue is to navigate through different information items
2. Research problems based on the semantically annotated data until the user can find
The main goal of this PhD work is to enhance Project the needed information. In this way, the PhD work contributes to
Management (PM) with semantic technologies and further, to research in project management systems. Currently, the user has
enable an interchange of information between a Semantic Desktop to know what he/she is looking for. Semantic annotations allow
and a Project Management System.
connections between items and the establishment of an ontology annotation of metadata or if the users have to annotate their
so that users can navigate easily through all information items. inputs by themselves. To address these risks, an in-depth
In addition, an interface between a Semantic Desktop system and evaluation of existing OpenSource PM Systems as well as of
the PM system shall be built, thus enabling an up-to-date access possible semantic systems, such as document management or
to the relevant information of a project. With this interface, knowledge management systems, will be done.
relationships between data and information items of projects on • To develop ontologies and combining them
multiple systems and information items on a desktop are A major problem is to develop the different types of
established. Hence, also the desktop can be searched for project ontologies, such as a domain ontology for project
relevant information. management and a time and date ontology for time data, and
Another benefit of this thesis is its domain independencies. then to link them. The risk here is that the matching does not
Project Management is part of every project, independent if it is fit. To avoid these problems an evaluation of possible
part of a health care or of an e-commerce project. existing ontologies will be done. Based on these experiences,
To enhance an existing PM system with semantic technologies the possible problems should be avoided. A further preliminary
following sub-goals are relevant: consideration regards whether the ontologies should be
merged. The PhD work will start with the assumption that
• Definition of a Project Management Domain they will not be merged, but properly interlinked.
Ontology and PM related Ontologies
• To ensure valid test results
For the PhD topic a project management domain ontology as
well as other related ontologies have to be developed. These A problem at the end of the work could be poor test results in
ontologies concern project related issues (e.g., milestones, case of poor test scenarios and questionnaires. To avoid this
tasks), project documents, temporal issues, or project problem, requirements and use cases will be done at the
members and their capabilities. All these ontologies are not beginning of the project. In addition, useful test scenarios are
on the same level, but they support and complement each needed. Therefore the main tests will be at the Electronic
other. Commerce Group of the Institute of Software Technology
and Interactive Systems at the Vienna University of
• Interface Semantic Desktop – Semantic PM Technology. During and after using the prototype (for a few
An interface between the client, a Semantic Desktop system weeks) questionnaires and test scenarios concerning the
and the semantic PM system must be implemented. The usage will be carried through and analyzed.
Semantic Desktop system must be extended with a fat-client
with the functionalities to search and to set links to PM 3. Economic relevance
information as well as to edit them. The ontology of the Today many projects miss their goals or are cancelled because of
Semantic Desktop must be adapted with parts of the project overruns in time and budget. The Chaos Report [10] identifies
management ontologies. that 31% of IT projects were cancelled or never completed and
nearly 53% of the projects cost almost twice the initial estimate.
• Flexible Architecture of the System Reasons for their failure are that information often gets lost. It is
To guarantee a positive result of this PhD a detailed hard to remember how and where to find the needed information.
architecture of the system has to be designed. This The working prototype enables a better search and reuse of
architecture has to be built in a modular and flexible way to already existing data by using semantic technologies, reducing
allow future extensions. Also all interfaces of this system thus time and costs. In addition, it reduces the effort of project
must adhere to open standards. management and increases the probability of project success.
• Proof of Concept of the PM System Information of already finished projects can be used as input for
The proof of concept of the PM system includes a prototype planning of new projects and to monitor progress and risks of
of the system with the following parts: ontologies, databases, projects underway. That is because of better storage of project
semantic technologies (metadata, tagging …), interface to relevant information. Due to explicitly describing the
the Semantic Desktop, adaptation of the Semantic Desktop relationships between various project documents in machine
and the functionalities of PM. It also includes the evaluation accessible form, better administration of projects and easier
of the prototype. The PhD deals with project management in identification of relevant information is possible. Based on
general. But to receive useful test results, the prototype improved relationships between different information tasks,
directs its attention to project management for IT projects connections between previous and current projects are possible
and in greater depth to the tourism (industry) domain. and a better administration of projects is feasible as well. Another
advantage is a faster reaction to project changes because
The main problems of the PhD will be
experiences and problems of previous projects and their
• The evaluation of existing Project Management management are traceable and visible.
Systems
Since project management software is a high volume market, and
One issue of the PhD work is to find an OpenSource Project since the solution envisaged tackles the major problems in project
Management System, based on a client-server application. management, the economic potential is very high.
Further consideration regards the types of documents that are
to be integrated in the system as well as their storage.
Another question is if the system will support automatic
4. State-of-the-art domain ontology, as well as the development of related
This chapter is divided into three parts, the state-of-the-art of ontologies, like date, time or events and the matching of the
Project Management, of ontologies and of Semantic Desktop ontologies. However, the primary focus will be on IT projects.
systems. All of them include the innovation aspects of this PhD
thesis. 4.3 Semantic Desktop
Semantic Desktop systems provide personal information
4.1 Project Management management where a user can store personal information items
There are several Project Management software tools, which help (documents, emails …). These information items are interpreted
companies to manage IT projects. Currently, there are no as Semantic Web resources, identified by a Uniform Resource
solutions in the field of project management which contain Identifier (URI) and all data tasks are accessible as RDF Graphs.
semantic technologies. The available systems differ considerably Ontologies allow users to qualify their information with their own
with regard to their functionality. The spectrum ranges from just words and enable the relationships between different information
time planning (milestones) or resource planning to tools that assist tasks (documents, contact information, calendar …). There are
the entire project management process, as for example project- already some Semantic Desktop systems available, like Gnowsis
open1 or dotproject2. [2,4], which is part of the NEPOMUK project, or IRIS [1], which
Problems with projects and their management are often a mix of belongs to the CALO research project at SRI International.
information storage (PM platforms, personal computer …), Current work in the field of Semantic Desktop is to enable
neglecting of milestones, costs, etc. and inconsistence of stored collaboration between such systems [3] or [5].
information (versioning of documents). These are only some In the PhD work one existing Semantic Desktop system, either
reasons why projects might suffer overruns in time or budget or IRIS3 or Gnowsis4, will be adapted for including project relevant
miss their goals or are cancelled. The Chaos Report of the information and therefore an interface between a Semantic
Standish Group [10] identifies that in 1994 US companies Desktop and the PM system will be built. The idea is that project
invested approx. $250 billion in IT development. 31% of the members can search on their personal desktop for project relevant
projects were cancelled or never completed and nearly 53% of the information.
projects cost almost twice the initial estimate.
The PhD work explicitly defines and employs the relationships 5. Technical solution
between different data items and their semantic descriptions. It The PhD work is still at the beginning and thus, this technical
allows a better search and reuse of already existing data and solution is a first draft how it should look like.
reduces the effort of project management and thus increases the
The ontologies will be developed in OWL (Web Ontology
probability of project success. Information of already finished
Language) using Protegé. The programming language of the
projects can be consulted and be used as input to plan new
application depends on the selected project management system,
projects, as well as to monitor progress and risks of projects
which will be evaluated. It was decided that the PhD application
underway.
will rely on an OpenSource solution. The database will be either
PostgreSQL or MySQL and the application will run on a Linux
4.2 Ontologies server.
Ontologies are the backbone of Semantic Web technologies. They
establish a common understanding of a domain by making the The implementation will follow a client-server architecture. The
shared conceptualization explicit in a machine-accessible manner. client uses Web Services, interacting with the Project
An ontology represents the domain knowledge by describing its Management application. The application includes the project
concepts or entities, and the relationships between these concepts relevant functionalities as well as the semantic ones. The
in a precise, detailed way, so that all relevant knowledge of the application communicates with the database, ontologies and data
domain is actually made explicitly. PROMONT [9], for example, storage via standard interfaces. The types of these interfaces
is a basic project management ontology which formalizes the depend on the finally selected PM system. Figure 1 gives an
typical elements for project structuring. Another already existing overview of a draft architecture of the PhD project (SemProM is
ontology is Harmonise [6], which is a tourism domain specific short for Semantic based Project Management).
ontology. Harmonise could be consulted for adapting the project The fat-client offers functionalities, such as upload and download
management ontology (with an industry specific domain) to of documents, editing (e.g. tasks, milestones, calender),
enhance test results. An example of a time ontology is a part in annotation of information, etc. With this client in the Semantic
ONTO-SD [7], which will be part of the evaluation of existing Desktop, relationships are enabled between project management
time ontologies. information and information on the personal desktop.
In this PhD the innovation is to develop a project management
1 3
http://project-open.org http://www.openiris.org/
2 4
http://www.dotproject.net http://www.gnowsis.org/
project management system (server). The user benefits from such
an integrated environment by having project management items
enriched with semantic descriptions readily available on the
desktop.
8. Conclusion
The main advantage of this PhD thesis is the higher probability of
successful delivery of projects based on better information
retrieval. The use of semantic technologies may lead to less
expenditure of time and therefore fewer costs. Also a better
storage of project relevant information is given due to for
Figure 1: Draft architecture of the PhD project example, metadata and relationships between information items.
Another possibility of implementing the client is a conventional By the improved relationships between different information tasks
Web Browser. Therefore an evaluation is needed for studying the connections between previous and current projects are possible
feasibility of useful functionalities. However it is not guaranteed and therefore a better administration of projects is feasible. Also a
that all the functionalities of the fat-client are feasible for the Web faster reaction to project changes is possible because experiences
Browser. and problems of previous projects and their management are
traceable and visible.
6. Future work 9. REFERENCES
The work is at the very beginning and hence an in-depth study of [1] Cheyer, A., Park, J., Giuli, R.2005: IRIS: Integrate. Relate.
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work. Heim, D., Nadeem, D., Adrian, B., Dengel, A. 2006:
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