Scenarios for Evaluating a Semantic Project Management Approach

Knowledge regarding closed projects is not sufficiently reused while planning new projects to improve the quality of project management processes. The reason is that current project management systems mainly support the ongoing project phase and do not explicitly consider the initiating and closing phase of a project management life cycle. By implementing semantic technologies within an existing open source project management system, these weaknesses can be improved. This system incorporates and links historical project knowledge that contributes to a more effective setup of upcoming projects. To design, develop and implement such a system we conducted interviews with IT companies regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the project management systems in use. On the basis of the interviews we identified three scenarios, which deal with the most common problems of project management, such as consistent data storage and how to retrieve information. These scenarios, described in this paper, are used as requirements and to evaluate the designed prototype.