Creating a Comprehensive Agent-oriented Methodology

While individual agent-oriented methodologies are useful for restricted situations, for wider industry adoption it is useful to create a methodological framework that provides method fragments from which situationally specific methodologies can be constructed. Such a flexible approach can be found in the use of situational method engineering (SME). In this context, this article describes the details of SME and its embodiment in the OPEN Process Framework (OPF) [1]. The OPF uses an underpinning metamodel, a repository (a.k.a. methodbase) of method fragments and guidelines to assist method engineers create the final methodological approach from a selected number of fragments to form an organization-specific or project-specific methodology. Having described SME with the OPF, we then show how this basis is suitable not only for objects but also for agents and discuss agent-specific method fragments. We then demonstrate how it becomes possible not only to recreate whole agent-oriented methodologies such as Prometheus or Gaia or Tropos but how it is also possible to create an enhanced methodology such as might be obtained, for instance, by adding Tropos method fragments into a Prometheus-style methodology in order to tailor Prometheus to situations for which it was not originally designed. This paper was originally published as Chapter XIII in a book entitled Agent-Oriented Methodologies (edited by B. Henderson-Sellers and P. Giorgini) by Idea Group in July 2005. The aim of the book was to present a significant number of agent-oriented methodologies, written by the original developers, but in a standard format. They were asked to not only describe their approaches but also highlight specific positive features and areas not addressed in their methodologies. These were followed by a chapter evaluating these 10 approaches objectively [2] and then this final chapter [3]. The overall aim is to encourage " convergence " between methodologies so that when industry en masse adopts agents there will be an agreed methodological offering. The idea is to avoid the errors of OO wherein industry sought an OO methodology to adopt in the early 1990s and were offered between 20 and 60 (depending upon which author you read) – this was tantamount to an admission that OO was not ready for industry usage. The way forward is proposed to be Situational Method Engineering (SME) [4]. Rather than seeking a single unified methodology, unification occurs at the metamethodology level [e.g. 5] and method fragments are generated from concepts in this metamodel [1] and stored …