  A growing number of researchers suggest that software process must be
tailored to a project's context to achieve maximal performance. Researchers
have studied 'context' in an ad-hoc way, with focus on those contextual factors
that appear to be of significance. The result is that we have no useful basis
upon which to contrast and compare studies. We are currently researching a
theoretical basis for software context for the purpose of tailoring and note
that a deeper consideration of the meaning of the term 'context' is required
before we can proceed. In this paper, we examine the term and present a model
based on insights gained from our initial categorisation of contextual factors
from the literature. We test our understanding by analysing a further six
documents. Our contribution thus far is a model that we believe will support a
theoretical operationalisation of software context for the purpose of process
tailoring.
