How many *ogies related terms do I really know and understand?
Being a software analyst (plus other ‘beings’), I tend to start looking for ways or more formally, a methodology to ‘identify or classify’ objects that I’m interested in exploring.
There’s a saying in management speak that ‘you can’t manage (it) if you can’t measure (it)’
To measure it, one has to also know what is ‘it’ I want measuring, so the first step appears to be ‘identify it’.
Well, this is assuming I have also set up my context for ‘identifying it’.
In the world of research, ‘identification or classification’ is considered as ‘the most central and generic conceptual exercises’. Conceptually this takes two forms of classification namely typologies and taxonomies.
Further clues are in this article;
G. Par´e, M.-C. Trudel, M. Jaana, S. Kitsiou, Synthesizing Information Systems Knowledge: A Typology of Literature Reviews, Information and Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.08.008
In essence, typology is derived deductively and taxonomy is usually derived empirically or inductively using cluster analysis or other statistical methods.
Which term to use depends on what I want to do with it.