The Styx Agent Methodology

Agent-oriented software engineering is a promising new approach to software engineering that uses the notion of an agent as the primary entity of abstraction. The development of methodologies for agentoriented software engineering is an area that is currently receiving much attention, there have been several agent-oriented methodologies proposed recently and survey papers are starting to appear. However the authors feel that there is still much work necessary in this area; current methodologies can be improved upon. This paper presents a new methodology, the Styx Agent Methodology, which guides the development of collaborative agent systems from the analysis phase through to system implementation and maintenance. A distinguishing feature of Styx is that it covers a wider range of software development life-cycle activities than do other recently proposed agent-oriented methodologies. The key areas covered by this methodology are the specification of communication concepts, inter-agent communication and each agent’s behaviour activation—but it does not address the development of application-specific parts of a system. It will be supported by a software tool which is currently in development.