Project

The project organization and the tasks to complete the standard plus verification & validation using a commonly developed reference implementation are currently in discussion. So the following setup is preliminary.

Focus Areas

Successful Standardization needs more than a Standard: A Reference Implementation plus Verification & Validation. Certification is needed later on once the standard is established and software products are developed and released.

Organization

The normative specification will be prepared by the Submission Team. To assure usefulness and quality of the standard, it is important that verification and validation (V&V) is done in parallel. A publicly available reference implementation is best suited for V&V.

It’s about collaboration, so let’s collaborate.

Proposal for agile project management:

Subproject	Description	Responsibility
CASCaDE Metamodel	Development of schema and constraints ("syntax") as part of the standard	Submission Team (WP1)
CASCaDE Ontology	Development of terms/concepts ("semantics") as part of the standard	Submission Team (WP2)
CASCaDE Operations	Development of operations as part of the standard	Submission Team (WP3)
CASCaDE Transformations	Development of transformations as part of the standard	Submission Team (WP4)
CASCaDE Requirements Verification	Verificiation of the requirements as listed in the RFP	Submission Team (WP5)
CASCaDE Specification	Development of operations as part of the standard	Submission Team (WP6)
CASCaDE Reference Implementation	Reference implementation	Development Team
CASCaDE Verification and Validation	Verificiation and validation of the standard using the reference implementation	V&V Team

Milestones

Third Draft (2025-01-21)

The milestones are matched with the schedule of the submission team to effectively verify and validate the upcoming standard in parallel to the submission. This reflects the current planning which shall be reviewed and reworked with the contributing project partners.

Milestone 2025-03

Description	Responsibility
Metamodel ("PIM") as well as schema with constraints ("PSM") for Knowledge Graph defined	Submission Team

Milestone 2025-06

Description	Responsibility
Schema for Ontology defined First draft ontology defined (reusing existing results)	Submission Team
Schema for Knowledge Graph implemented Simple Knowledge Graph created Simple Frontend for Knowledge Graph (including preparation of framework)	Development Team

Milestone 2025-09

Description	Responsibility
Knowledge Graph created Improved Frontend for Knowledge Graph Two transformations to Knowledge Graph implemented	Development Team
Requirements V&V	V&V Team
Open API defined Initial Standard document submitted to OMG	Submission Team

Milestone 2025-12

Description	Responsibility
Open API implemented (MVP) Improved Frontend for Knowledge Graph Two Exports from Knowledge Graph (e.g. native and HTML)	Development Team
Requirements V&V Two transformations validated (including preparation of test-data)	V&V Team
Second Draft Ontology defined Revised Standard document submitted to OMG	Submission Team

Milestone 2026-03

Description	Responsibility
One more transformation and model integration implemented (MVP)	Development Team
Draft ontology validated	V&V Team
Final ontology defined Final Standard document submitted to OMG	Submission Team

Milestone 2026-06

Description	Responsibility
One more transformation and model integration implemented	Development Team
Final ontology validated	V&V Team
Findings of V&V and FTF addressed	Submission Team

Milestone 2026-09

Description	Responsibility
Open API complemented	Development Team
Three transformations and model integration validated	V&V Team
Findings of V&V and FTF addressed	Submission Team

Milestone 2026-12

Description	Responsibility
Reference implementation refactored and released	Development Team
Standard and reference implementation validated	V&V Team
Findings of V&V and FTF addressed Standard adopted by OMG	Submission Team

Contributing Partners

The teams responsible for reference implementation resp. verification and validation are looking for funding. The work will begin, if a minimum capacity of 4 full-time-equivalent (FTE) team members are committed.

Organizations contributing to the effort will form a stakeholder committee defining the priority of backlog items and reviewing the results per iteration (“sprint”).

Organization	Potential Roles	2025	2026
enso managers GmbH, Berlin	Software Architect, Product Owner	0.4 FTE	0.4 FTE

Why Open Source ?

Join Forces for Quality and Speed

Publicly available reference implementation and test cases support standard quality and speed of adoption. Examples of successful collaborations are:

• The German Car Industry has built an ecosystem with a shared supply chain from the beginning. The sparking plug has been produced by Robert Bosch; the OEMs did not build it themselves.
• INSTA Elektro GmbH has been founded by competing GIRA, Jung and Berker to share the cost of electronics development (dimmers, timers etc.).
• All web-browsers (Firefox, Edge, Chrome, Safari, Opera and many others) use one of the open-source engines Gecko, WebKit or Blink. Opera and even Microsoft have abandoned their own browser engines in favor of an open-source product.

Why should software-vendors develop the standard core-features of CASCaDE independently by themselves? And why debug towards interoperability later on?

Benefits of an Open-Source “Community Edition”

for Software Users	for Software Vendors
Direct influence on features and priorities First „Minimal Viable Product“ within a year Early evaluation and pilot projects Smaller organizations (suppliers) can participate in collaboration and data exchange with minor cost Reference for compatibility and interoperability Independent certification of software products	„Basic Features“ (Kano) don‘t allow differentiation and are commonly developed; lots of cost saved Discussion and support by voluntary contributors Market-proven base for „Enterprise Editions“ with professional features Solution gets known without marketing effort Proven marketing approach for innovative software products Many successful examples not only in the US, but also in Europe