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Questions

A useful ontology should help an organisation ask better questions, not just store better diagrams.

Questions are one of the main ways an organisation discovers gaps, tests assumptions, and reduces Knowledge Fog.

Why questions matter​

An organisation's ontology should make it easier to ask:

  • what do we know
  • what do we not know
  • what is unclear
  • what is weakly evidenced
  • what is structurally missing
  • what matters most right now

This is especially important for agents. Agents need structured question patterns to guide discovery, classification, validation, and follow-up.

Organisation​

Examples of organisational questions include:

  • How bureaucratic is the organisation?
  • Do we have a politics problem that pulls people away from mission alignment?
  • Do people choose paths that are not optimal for the mission?

These kinds of questions point to governance quality, organisational friction, and hidden social dynamics.

Examples include:

  • Why is metadata management needed?
  • Who is using the data?
  • Which data elements are used where?
  • What is the quality of the data?
  • What is the definition of an entity or attribute?
  • What processes use a specific object?
  • What applications will be impacted if a customer data feed changes?
  • Which business functions or processes are supported by customer data?
  • Which data elements are in compliance with industry standards?

These questions connect ontology, data, process, and impact analysis.

Business Model Canvas style questions​

The source material also includes a strong set of business-model questions. These remain useful as ontology discovery prompts.

Key partners​

  • Who are our key partners?
  • Who are our key suppliers?
  • Which key resources are we acquiring from partners?
  • Which key activities do partners perform?

Key activities​

  • What key activities do our value propositions require?
  • What key activities are needed by our distribution channels?
  • What key activities are needed by our customer relationships?
  • What key activities are needed by our revenue streams?

Key resources​

  • What key resources do our value propositions require?
  • What resources support our distribution channels?
  • What resources support customer relationships?
  • What resources support revenue streams?

Value propositions​

  • What value do we deliver to the customer?
  • Which customer problems are we helping solve?
  • What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?
  • Which customer needs are we satisfying?

Customer relationships​

  • What type of relationship does each customer segment expect us to establish and maintain?
  • Which relationships have we already established?
  • How are they integrated with the rest of our business model?
  • How costly are they?

Channels​

  • Through which channels do our customer segments want to be reached?
  • How are we reaching them now?
  • How are our channels integrated?
  • Which channels work best?
  • Which channels are most cost-efficient?
  • How are we integrating them with customer routines?

Cost structure​

  • What are the most important costs inherent in our business model?
  • Which key resources are most expensive?
  • Which key activities are most expensive?

Revenue streams​

  • For what value are customers really willing to pay?
  • For what do they currently pay?
  • How are they currently paying?
  • How would they prefer to pay?
  • How much does each revenue stream contribute to overall revenues?

Architecture questions​

Application architecture​

  • What API is called by a given API?
  • How complex are our applications?
  • How many systems do not have APIs defined?
  • What API does a given system use?

Data architecture​

  • How complex is our data landscape?
  • How many systems do not have data dictionaries?

Infrastructure architecture​

  • How complex is our infrastructure?

Identity and organisational questions​

Strategic intent​

  • Who are we?
  • Why do we exist?
  • What matters to us?
  • What makes us different and unique?
  • How do we help society?
  • How are we being perceived?

Organisational structure​

  • What makes all the parts of our enterprise work together?
  • What are we capable of achieving?
  • How do we collaborate as a team?

Organisational experience​

  • What is our role in people's lives?
  • What value do we create?
  • What is the result of our work?

Why this matters for agents​

Agents should be able to use structured question sets like these to:

  • identify missing ontology objects
  • discover hidden dependencies
  • detect weak evidence areas
  • guide interviews and discovery work
  • reduce Knowledge Fog systematically

Questions are not incidental. They are part of the operating logic of the ontology.

Diagram​

If the embedded viewer does not load, open directly:

  • /assets/gxp/diagrams/GXP-Knoweldge-Collaboration.drawio