A technique for defining agent-oriented engineering processes with tool support

The formalization of engineering processes is necessary for guaranteeing the quality and cost of the products involved. Agent-oriented engineering has already proposed development processes that still need to be further formalized to be applicable by non-researchers. This paper proposes a technique to instantiate processes for specific agent-oriented methodologies. This technique is based on three orthogonal views that are respectively related with lifecycles, disciplines and guidances. In addition, processes are modeled with a tool, which is automatically generated from a process metamodel inspired by the software & systems process engineering metamodel. Accordingly, engineers can choose the methodology–process pair best-suited for the characteristics of their project. The paper illustrates the approach based on the unified development process and the scrum process for the INGENIAS methodology and compares the results with other existing alternatives.