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Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology
, 2003
"... Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos, for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all related mentalistic notions (for instance goals and plans) are used in all phases of software develop ..."
Abstract
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Cited by 461 (91 self)
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Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos, for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all related mentalistic notions (for instance goals and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from early analysis down to the actual implementation. Second, Tropos covers also the very early phases of requirements analysis, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the environment where the software must operate, and of the kind of interactions that should occur between software and human agents. The methodology is illustrated with the help of a case study. The Tropos language for conceptual modeling is formalized in a metamodel described with a set of UML class diagrams.
Towards Modelling and Reasoning Support for Early-Phase Requirements Engineering
, 1997
"... Requirements are usually understood as stating what a system is supposed to do, as opposed to how it should do it. However, understanding the organizational context and rationales (the "Whys") that lead up to systems requirements can be just as important for the ongoing success of the sys ..."
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Cited by 414 (42 self)
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Requirements are usually understood as stating what a system is supposed to do, as opposed to how it should do it. However, understanding the organizational context and rationales (the "Whys") that lead up to systems requirements can be just as important for the ongoing success of the system. Requirements modelling techniques can be used to help deal with the knowledge and reasoning needed in this earlier phase of requirements engineering. However, most existing requirements techniques are intended more for the later phase of requirements engineering, which focuses on completeness, consistency, and automated verification of requirements. In contrast, the early phase aims to model and analyze stakeholder interests and how they might be addressed, or compromised, by various system-and-environment alternatives. This paper argues, therefore, that a different kind of modelling and reasoning support is needed for the early phase. An outline of the i framework is given as an example of a ...
Towards Requirements-Driven Information Systems Engineering: The Tropos Project
- INFORMATION SYSTEMS
, 2002
"... Information systems of the future will have to perform well within ever-changing organizational environments. Unfortunately, existing software development methodologies (object-oriented, structured or otherwise) have traditionally been inspired by programming concepts, not organizational ones, leadi ..."
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Cited by 242 (48 self)
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Information systems of the future will have to perform well within ever-changing organizational environments. Unfortunately, existing software development methodologies (object-oriented, structured or otherwise) have traditionally been inspired by programming concepts, not organizational ones, leading to a semantic gap between the software system and its operational environment. To reduce this gap, we propose a software development methodology named Tropos which is founded on concepts used to model early requirements. Our proposal adopts the i* organizational modeling framework, which o#ers the notions of actor, goal and (actor) dependency, and uses these as a foundation to model early and late requirements, architectural and detailed design. The paper outlines Tropos phases through an e-business example, and sketches a formal language which underlies the methodology and is intended to support formal analysis. The methodology seems to complement well proposals for agent-oriented programming platforms.
A requirements-driven development methodology
- In Proc. of the 13th Int. Conf. On Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’01
, 2001
"... Information systems of the future will have to better match their operational organizational environment. Unfortunately, development methodologies have traditionally been inspired by programming concepts, not organizational ones, leading to a semantic gap between the system and its environment. To r ..."
Abstract
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Cited by 103 (26 self)
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Information systems of the future will have to better match their operational organizational environment. Unfortunately, development methodologies have traditionally been inspired by programming concepts, not organizational ones, leading to a semantic gap between the system and its environment. To reduce as much as possible this gap, this paper proposes a development methodology named Tropos which is founded on concepts used to model early requirements. Our proposal adopts the i* organizational modeling framework [21], which offers the notions of actor, goal and (actor) dependency, and uses these as a foundation to model early and late requirements, architectural and detailed design. The paper outlines Tropos phases through an e-business example, and sketches a formal language which underlies the methodology and is intended to support formal analysis. The methodology seems to complement well proposals for agent-oriented programming platforms.
From Non-Functional Requirements to Design through Patterns
- Requirements Engineering
, 2000
"... This paper proposes a systematic treatment of NFRs in descriptions of patterns and when applying patterns during design. The approach organizes, analyzes and refines non-functional requirements, and provides guidance and reasoning support when applying patterns during the design of a software sy ..."
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Cited by 90 (3 self)
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This paper proposes a systematic treatment of NFRs in descriptions of patterns and when applying patterns during design. The approach organizes, analyzes and refines non-functional requirements, and provides guidance and reasoning support when applying patterns during the design of a software system. Three design patterns taken from the literature are used to illustrate this approach. 1. Introduction Requirements Engineering is now widely recognized as a crucial part of software engineering, and has established itself as a distinct research area. Equally important is how requirements drive the rest of software development. In particular, during the design phase, much of the quality aspects of a system are determined. Systems qualities are often expressed as non-functional requirements, also called quality attributes e.g. [1,2]. These are requirements such as reliability, usability, maintainability, cost, development time, and are crucial for system success
The tropos software development methodology: Processes
, 2001
"... Abstract. Tropos is a novel agent-oriented software development methodology founded on two key features: (i) the notions of agent, goal, plan and various other knowledge level concepts are fundamental primitives used uniformly throughout the software development process; and (ii) a crucial role is a ..."
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Cited by 82 (5 self)
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Abstract. Tropos is a novel agent-oriented software development methodology founded on two key features: (i) the notions of agent, goal, plan and various other knowledge level concepts are fundamental primitives used uniformly throughout the software development process; and (ii) a crucial role is assigned to requirements analysis and specification when the system-to-be is analyzed with respect to its intended environment. This paper provides a (first) detailed account of the Tropos methodology. In particular, we describe the basic concepts on which Tropos is founded and the types of models one builds out of them. We also specify the analysis process through which design flows from external to system actors through a goal analysis and delegation. In addition, we provide an abstract syntax for Tropos diagrams and other linguistic constructs. 1
A Goal-Based Organizational Perspective on Multi-Agent Architectures
, 2001
"... A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is an organization of coordinated autonomous agents that interact in order to achieve common goals. Considering real world organizations as an analogy, this paper proposes architectural styles for MAS which adopt concepts from organization theory and strategic alliances ..."
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Cited by 80 (40 self)
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A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is an organization of coordinated autonomous agents that interact in order to achieve common goals. Considering real world organizations as an analogy, this paper proposes architectural styles for MAS which adopt concepts from organization theory and strategic alliances literature. The styles are intended to represent a macro-level architecture of a MAS, and they are modeled using the i* framework which offers the notions of actor, goal and actor dependency for modeling multi-agent settings. The styles are also specified as metaconcepts in the Telos modeling language. Moreover, each style is evaluated with respect to a set of software quality attributes, such as predictability and adaptability. The paper also explores the adoption of micro-level patterns proposed elsewhere in order to give a finer-grain description of a MAS architecture. These patterns define how goals assigned to actors participating in an organizational architecture will be fulfilled by agents.
A Knowledge Level Software Engineering Methodology for Agent Oriented Programming
, 2000
"... Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos, for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all the related mentalistic notions (for instance: beliefs, goals, actions and plans) are used in all phase ..."
Abstract
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Cited by 73 (34 self)
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Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos, for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all the related mentalistic notions (for instance: beliefs, goals, actions and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from the early analysis down to the actual implementation. Second, Tropos covers also the very early phases of requirements analysis, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the environment where the software must operate, and of the kind of interactions that should occur between software and human agents. The methodology is illustrated with the help of a case study.
Comparing Agent-Oriented Methodologies
, 2003
"... Numerous methodologies for developing agent-based systems have been proposed in the literature. However, their application is still limited due to their lack of maturity. Evaluating methodologies' strengths and weaknesses plays an important role in improving them and in developing the "nex ..."
Abstract
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Cited by 64 (6 self)
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Numerous methodologies for developing agent-based systems have been proposed in the literature. However, their application is still limited due to their lack of maturity. Evaluating methodologies' strengths and weaknesses plays an important role in improving them and in developing the "next-generation" of methodologies. This paper presents a comparison of three prominent agent-oriented methodologies: MaSE, Prometheus and Tropos. It is performed based upon an attribute-based framework which addresses four major areas: concepts, modelling language, process and pragmatics. The objectivity of the comparison is increased by including inputs from the authors of the methodologies using a questionnaire and by conducting an experimental evaluation of the methodologies.
Requirements Elicitation and Validation with Real World Scenes
- IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
, 1998
"... Usage Description Focus of Approach Fig. 2: Interrelating Real World Example Fragments with Model Components. The interrelation takes place at a fine-grained level, since arbitrary fragments of the recorded observations (e.g. a cut-out video clip or even a part of one picture as extreme) can be li ..."
Abstract
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Cited by 63 (3 self)
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Usage Description Focus of Approach Fig. 2: Interrelating Real World Example Fragments with Model Components. The interrelation takes place at a fine-grained level, since arbitrary fragments of the recorded observations (e.g. a cut-out video clip or even a part of one picture as extreme) can be linked to any ele- ment of a conceptual model -- in contrast to relating the whole observation to the current-state model. The types of interrelations to be created between the RWEFs and the components of the current-state models depend on the modelling primitives. Note that we do not propose a new conceptual modelling technique, but argue to embed an appropriate existing technique in our overall approach. Likewise, we neither provide any guidelines for capturing real world scenes nor for the pre-structuring of real world scenes into real world examples. However, the approach described in the following can be embedded in the guidelines proposed, e.g. by McGraw and Harbinson [26] for capturing...
