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1. Purpose
This FIPA Technical Committee will focus on the identification of a methodology for developing multi-agent systems.
Existing development methodologies have different advantages when applied to specific problems. It is therefore possible to think that the developer of a MAS would like to use phases or models or elements coming from different methodologies in order to build up a personalized approach for his own problem.
In order to reuse contributions coming from existing methodologies we will adopt the method engineering (see the metamodel page for some references) as the referring paradigm. In this context the development methodology is constructed by the developer assembling pieces of the process (method fragments) from a method base. In this way he/she could obtain the best process for his/her specific need/problem.
We will take method fragments (the composing elements of the development methodology) from several existing methodologies like: AOR, Cassiopeia, Gaia, Mase, Message, PASSI, Tropos, and so on, if these fragments are coherent with the FIPA architecture. Other novel and specific contributions will be considered as well.
Further info and work documents can be found below.
2. Organisation and Contacts
3. Documents (current version)
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Work Plans
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f-wp-00023 (Initial Version 2003-02-10)
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4. Milestones
5. Remit
6. Status
Current results and future work status as at 32nd FIPA Meeting in Rockville, MD:
TC Methodology proposed that FIPA adopts the following resolutions:
- TC Methodology recognizes the importance of guidelines for composition of fragments in a new methodology and decomposition of an existing one in order to obtain useful fragments. They will be part of the the guideline documents that is the last deliverable of this TC.
- The different approaches for composing fragments TC Methodology identified at this stage are:
- Bottom up approaches (MAS meta-model/architecture driven)
- Top down approaches (process driven)
- Evaluation-driven approaches (methodology metrics/features)
- Mixed approaches
- TC Methodology recognizes that integration fragments could be necessary for assembling a methodology, but proposes that they not be part of a FIPA specification
- TC Methodology recognized that fragments can be located at the phase or activity level but not at the step level (too fine-grained). We recommend to our members of aligning their contributions according to this classification
- TC Methodology proposes that fragment classification is used for navigation inside the repository, not for composition
- TC Methodology proposes the introduction of methodology frameworks in the repository structure in order to facilitate the composition of a new methodology.
- TC Methodology recognizes that each framework is related to a collection of methodologies with similar features and referring to similar meta-models
TC Methodologies gratefully thanks all people attending the meeting and the others contributing offline.
Status updates from prior meetings can be found in the respective resolutions. This information is available at FIPA Past Meetings.
7. How to Contribute
Communication with the TC is via the email mailing list methodology(at)fipa.org
The working area of this TC can be found at: www.pa.icar.cnr.it/~cossentino/FIPAmeth/
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