Towards method engineering for multi-agent systems: A validation of a generic MAS metamodel

Abstract

It is a widely accepted premise that no single methodology can be suitable for all Multi-Agent System (MAS) software projects. This premise is playing a significant role in the appearance of new methodologies at an increasing pace. To effectively harness the software engineering knowledge of methodologies, method engineering is an appealing approach. It focuses on project-specific methodology construction from existing method fragments and it requires a generic product-focussed metamodel to serve as a representational infrastructure to unify existingmethodologies into a single specification.As part of its ongoing validation towards method engineering forMAS development,we present our generic metamodel and illustrate in this paper its wide applicability with respect to 10 methodologies extant agent-oriented. This validation provides further evidence to support the use of our metamodel towards the construction of situated MASmethodologies. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.