Systematic incremental development of agent systems, using Prometheus

This paper presents a mechanism for dividing an agent oriented application into the three IEEE defined scoping levels of essential, conditional and optional. This mechanism is applied after the initial system specification, and is then used to direct incremental development with three separate releases. The scoping described can be applied at any stage of a project, in order to guide consistent scoping back if such is needed. The three levels of scoping that are used are consistent with the approach used in many companies. The approach to scoping requires that scenarios are prioritised manually on a five point scale. All other aspects are then prioritised automatically, based on this information. The approach used allows a developer to indicate what size partitions - based on number of scenarios - are required for each scoping level. The mechanisms are applied to the Prometheus development methodology and are integrated into the Prometheus design tool (PDT).