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Introduction

The CTWG Mental Model Task Force (MMTF) helps TOIP members and communities to express themselves in ways that enable others to understand what that communication intends to convey to whatever level of precision is needed.This is important, because contributors/users in TOIP come from various backgroundsis a community in which people from all sorts of backgrounds (want to) participate. Their culture may not be Western. English may not be their native tongue. They may be experts in technical as well as non-technological topics that are relevant for TOIP. Working with one another presumes a setting where participants have some level of shared understanding. Often, sharing one's understanding at a superficial level suffices. Other situations require that underlying concepts are shared in a more in-depth fashion. It's like cars: people buying, selling, or driving cars do not need in-depth shared knowledge about cars, whereas (maintenance or construction) engineers or liability lawyers need to share a deeper knowledge of how cars do (or do not) work.

We expect to see situations of "language confusion", i.e. in which people use words or phrases, the intension (not: intention) of which differs from the interpretation of some listeners/readers. CTWG aims to provide means to resolve that. Sometimes a casual glance at a dictionary or glossary is the solution. In other cases, deeper understanding matters, e.g. in when drafting specifications or contracts. Then we need more than a set of definitions. 

Scope

The scope of CTWG is to assist TOIP working groups (WGs), task forces (TFs), and other communities of interest or communities of practice that exist both within and outside of the ToIP Foundation to develop the concepts and terms they need for  themselves or for particular projects, and make them available to the public. This includes developing artifacts and tools for discovering, documenting, defining, and (deeply) understanding the concepts and terms used within TOIP. Key deliverables include ways to define terms (e.g. terms wikis), maintain a corpus of data underlying these terms, and provide ways to query the corpus to obtain terms e.g. for the creation of glossaries and other artifacts. The data that underlies the terms typically consists of (formally modeled) concepts, plus their relations and constraints, and will encompass perspectives from technical, governance, business, legal and other realms. Although CTWG will maintain this corpus of data via repositories that all TOIP WGs and TFs can contribute to and inherit from, this does not preclude WGs or TFs from maintaining their own specialized glossaries if they require. Such specialized glossaries, together with other generators of concepts and terminology elsewhere in the industry, are expected to feed back into the glossaries and corpus of data maintained by CTWG in a cycle of continuous improvement.

Meetings

Schedule:

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A gathering of people with so many differences, even if they are motivated to work together, is the raw ground on which misunderstandings thrive.

The mission of the CTWG Mental Model Task Force (MMTF) is to help (participants of) WGs/TFs to design and document mental models, i.e., (small) sets of concepts (ideas), relations between them, and constraints, such that together they form a coherent and consistent whole that helps the WG/TF e.g., for architecting, designing, and implementing both IT components and their governance processes.

This is no easy task. First, the design (and documenting) of mental models is currently a craft, of which some good examples exist. Second, using a mental model typically requires its user(s) to shift their reference perspective, similar to a person that gets a new pair of glasses: it takes time (and some perseverance) to get used to it to the point that the person is no longer aware that she uses them (similar to the four stages of competence). Nevertheless, mental models (or the terminology used therein) has already been used in WGs/TFs in the context of YOMA, and governance.

Scope

In scope for the MMTF is the following:

• develop and maintain guidance (and associated documentation) for
  • creating awareness amongst WGs/TFs about mental models and the benefits of knowing and using them,
  • using mental models in the praxis of the WGs/TFs, adapting them when necessary
  • developing new mental models, and documenting them such that they can be used (also by others)
• contribute to the further development of the CTWG terminology tools, so that it can support the guidance
• maintain the CTWG mental models.

Meetings

Schedule:

Meetings are (tbd). We should put this in the ToIP Calendar for full meeting details including Zoom links.

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The table below lists all CTWG deliverables that have been approved to move beyond Pre-Draft status.

The overall scope of the CTWG includes the following activities:

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1. Curated, based on evidence and using expert opinion, such that concepts, relations between concepts and constraints can e.g. be
   1. carefully defined,
   2. assigned an identifier (name/number/label) to distinguish it from any other concept in the corpus,
   3. mapped onto terms that are defined and/or commonly accepted in various relevant domains/contexts,
   4. their usage and relevance documented from organic sources,
   5. their status adjudicated into e.g. 'working', 'preferred', 'accepted', 'superseded' and 'deprecated'.
2. Enhanced in a collaborative, open, and fair manner by interested community members.
3. Versioned.
4. Published in different ways (e.g. as a glossary, concept map, use-case stories ...), for specific purposes (e.g. education, reference, , ...) by different means (e.g. a PDF, a website, presentations/webinars, ...) and as needed by different audiences/stakeholders or domains (e.g. business domains, architectural domains, ...)
5. Promoted as a valuable public resource and an influence for convergence and excellence.

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Chairs / Leads

• Co-Chairs: Rieks Joosten, Drummond Reed, Daniel Hardman

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