MASD: Multi-agent systems development methodology

Abstract

In recent years, multi-agent systems gained growing acceptance as a required technology to develop complex distributed systems. As result, there is an increased need for practical methodology for developing such systems. This paper presents a new Multi-Agent System Development (MASD) methodology developed over several years through analyzing and studying most of the existing agent oriented methodologies. This new methodology is constructed based on the strengths and weaknesses of existing methodologies. MASD aims to provide designers of agent-based systems with a set of methods and guidelines that allow them to control the construction process of complex systems, enabling software engineers to specify agent-based systems that would be implemented within an execution environment, for example the Jadex platform. MASD differs from existing methodologies in that it is a detailed and complete methodology for developing multi-agent systems. This paper describes the methodology's process and illustrates it using a running example – namely, a car rental system.