CREATING A COMPREHENSIVE AGENT-ORIENTED METHODOLOGY - EXTENDED ABSTRACT

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