Using Protégé in a Domain-Driven Software Product Development Process
Andrew Trice, Ph.D.
Director of Product Analysis and Interface Design
Workscape, Inc.
 
This presentation will report on some highlights of the use of Protégé to construct a domain model in the human resources (HR) area, specifically managerial compensation planning. This domain involves specifying a complex set of relationships between types of compensation programs employed at large organizations (e.g. base pay increases, bonus, stock awards, other non-cash benefits), corporate budget allocations and transfers, multiple organizational hierarchies used for compensation eligibility and award approval, and decision support concepts (e.g. budget modeling, guidelines and limits).

At Workscape, a major provider of HR software solutions, we have been evolving this domain model over the last several months and leveraging it in the construction of a next-generation product to support complex compensation planning problems. Early results have been encouraging, and project is ongoing.

Some of the salient topics to be covered in this presentation are as follows:

- The process of cultivating acceptance of a domain modeling tool as a supplement to an object-oriented modeling tool
in a software product company;
- Embedding the use of Protégé within a software product development process;
- Custom Protégé Metaclasses useful for supporting software product development;
- Experience with exporting Protégé models to Rational Rose;
- Use of advanced Protégé widgets in the domain modeling process, e.g.,

Graph Widget for modeling organizational hierarchies
Table Widget for UI prototyping;

- Use of Protégé forms as mockups for product usability testing;
- Metrics on the domain model;
- Role of Protégé in developing business services;
- Suggested extensions to the tool that would be particularly useful for software product development