In the ontology engineering field, key aspects of real-world business contexts are not normally taken into account. One of these crucial aspects is that of planning and scheduling. Software engineering practitioners use different approaches and tools for planning and scheduling software development projects, whereas their counterparts in ontology engineering encounter many problems to create project plans and schedules. To bridge the gap we have created a method and a tool (the latter called gOntt) for systematizing the scheduling of ontology development projects in the context of the NeOn Methodology. In this paper we try to explain the methodological pillars in which method and tool are grounded. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.