How Do I Create a Software Ontology?

Two senior engineers argued for an hour over a bug. The fix took ten minutes, but the argument lasted fifty. One meant “active subscription” when saying customer , the other meant “any account.” Both were correct but lacked a shared model.

A software ontology is an explicit, agreed-upon domain model, including concepts, meanings, and relationships. In DDD, it covers ubiquitous language, bounded contexts, and aggregates. This guide creates one.

Goal

Create a software ontology for a domain: a model that identifies key concepts, defines them once, classifies (entity, value object, or aggregate), and maps relationships and boundaries. The final artifact is an agreed-upon model reflected in the code.