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AGENT-ORIENTED METHODS AND METHOD ENGINEERING 131

Table 8.1

Comparison of Ten Agent-Oriented Methodologies (continued)
D. Comparison Regarding Supportive-Related Criteria
MAS-CommonKADS

Gaia Tropos Prometheus PASSI Adelfe MaSE RAP MESSAGE INGENIAS

Software and methodological support N N N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Open systems Y N N N N Y N N N N
Dynamic structure N N N N Y N P N N N
Agility and robustness N N Y Y N Y Y Y N N
Support for conventional objects N N N Y N Y N Y Y Y
Support for mobile agents N N N N Y N N N N N
Support for ontology N N Y N Y N N N Y N
Source: After Tran and Low (2005).
Key: H = high; M = medium; L = low; Y = yes; N = no; P = possibly.

a high degree of flexibility to the process engineer, perhaps assisted by an automated tool (Nguyen
and Henderson-Sellers, 2003), who can allocate appropriate deontic values to any specific pair
of process components depending upon the context, that is, the specific project, skills set of the
development team, and so on. Linkage decisions are made either subjectively/experientially or by
means of an overall assessment of a number of factors relating to the project. These factors include
maturity/capability level (such as CMM or SPICE), specific skills in the workforce, domain of
the project, and so forth.
As noted earlier, one of the hardest tasks currently in SME construction is the selection of the
optimal set of method fragments to suit any specific situation. Syntactic coupling can be verified in
terms of the matching of the output from one fragment to the input for a second. This is facilitated
by generating fragments from a metamodel and also by using a standard way of documenting the
fragments. Nevertheless, the current reality is that the semantic aspect of the fragments must be
analyzed “by hand,” usually by a skilled method engineer (either in-house or as a visiting con-
sultant or mentor). Work toward a more objective approach is under way (e.g., McBride, 2004;
Nguyen and Henderson-Sellers, 2003; Ralyté, 2004), and prototype tools (MethodComposer,
MET) have been developed.
Creation of a project-specific or organization-specific agent-oriented methodology then proceeds
using the agent-oriented method fragments contained in the OPF repository together with many
non–agent-oriented method fragments (typically the earlier object-oriented method fragments) that
are needed for those elements of software development that are not technology/paradigm-dependent.
These include method fragments to describe project management, some metrics, reusability, and
so on. A fully comprehensive methodology, suitable for direct industry usage, can be constructed