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Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology

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Abstract

Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos,1 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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITC-Irst, Povo (Trento), Italy

    Paolo Bresciani & Anna Perini

  2. Department of Information and Communication Technology, University of Trento, Italy

    Paolo Giorgini & Fausto Giunchiglia

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

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  1. Paolo Bresciani
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  2. Anna Perini
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  3. Paolo Giorgini
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  4. Fausto Giunchiglia
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  5. John Mylopoulos
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Bresciani, P., Perini, A., Giorgini, P. et al. Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 8, 203–236 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:AGNT.0000018806.20944.ef

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