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.

Systems composed of interacting autonomous agents offer a promising software engineering approach for developing applications in complex domains. However, this multiagent system paradigm introduces a number of new abstractions and design/development issues when compared with more traditional approaches to software development. Accordingly, new analysis and design methodologies, as well as new tools, are needed to effectively engineer such systems.

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.

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

We are developing an agent-oriented software development methodology, called Tropos, which integrates ideas from multi-agent system technologies and Requirements Engineering research. A distinguishing feature of Tropos is that it covers software development from early requirements analysis to detailed design, allowing for a deeper understanding of the operational environment of the new software system. This paper proposes a characterization of the process of early requirements analysis, defined in terms of transformation applications. Different categories of transformations are presented and illustrated by means of a running example. These transformations are then mapped onto a set of primitive transformations. The paper concludes with observations on the form and the role of the proposed transformations.

. We describe a software development methodology called Tropos for agent-oriented software systems. The methodology adopts the i* modeling framework [29], 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 the methodology, and shows how the concepts of Tropos can be accommodated within UML. In addition, we also adopt recent proposals for extensions of UML to support design specifications for agent software. Finally the paper compares Tropos to other research on agent-oriented software development. 1

Abstract. In today’s increasingly knowledge-intensive economy, patents and other forms of intellectual property mechanisms are widely used to protect inventions, generate revenue, and build strategic alliances. Techniques from conceptual modelling can be used to analyze the structure of knowledge, highlighting crucial entities and relationships. However, to analyze the strategic significance of particular pieces or bodies of knowledge within an organizational and business context, we need an ontology that captures the social and intentional dimensions of knowledge management. In this paper, we outline the use of the i * strategic actor relationships modelling framework to support IP management. In i*, actors have goals, and know-how and resources for achieving goals. Patents restrict the use of know-how, thus prompting actors to reposition themselves within a network of dependency relationships. Examples from the e-commerce domain are used to illustrate. 1

Abstract. Computer Security is one of today’s hot topic and the need for conceptual models of security features have brought up a number of proposals ranging from UML extensions to novel conceptual models. What is still missing, however, are models that focus on high-level security requirements, without forcing the modeler to immediately get down to security mechanisms. The modeling process itself should make it clear why encryption, authentication or access control are necessary, and what are the tradeoffs, if they are selected. In this paper we show that the i*/Tropos framework lacks the ability to capture these essential features and needs to be augmented. To motivate our proposal, we build upon a substantial case study – the modeling of the Secure Electronic Transactions e-commerce suites by VISA and MasterCard – to identify missing modeling features. In a nutshell, the key missing concept is the separation of the notion of offering a service (of a handling data, performing a task or fulfilling a goal) and ownership of the very same service. This separation is what makes security essential. The ability of the methodology to model a clear dependency relation between those offering a service (the merchant processing a credit card number), those requesting the service (the bank debiting the payment), and those owning the very same data (the cardholder), make security solutions emerge as a natural consequence of the modeling process. 1

Software 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, rather than organizational ones, leading to a semantic gap between system and its operational environment. To reduce this gap, we propose a software development methodology named Tropos which is founded on the i * organizational modeling framework. i * offers the notions of actor, goal and (actor) dependency. Tropos uses these concepts as a basis to model early and late requirements, architectural and detailed design for a software system. The paper outlines Tropos phases through an e-business example. The methodology complements well proposals for agent-oriented programming platforms. 1

This paper describes a methodology for agent oriented software engineering, called Tropos. Tropos is based on three key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all the related mentalistic notions (for instance: goals 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. Third, Tropos adopts a transformational approach to process artifacts refinement. The methodology is partially illustrated with the help of a case study.