Applying use case maps to multi-agent systems: a feature interaction example

Multi-agent systems are emerging as a potential solution to the problem of constructing flexible network-based software. A characteristic of such systems is that whole-system behaviour patterns emerge from the combination of many details in many agents, in sometimes intricate ways. Understanding the big picture by composing the details is often difficult and designing the details to achieve some desired whole-system behaviour pattern can easily become a cut-and-try exercise. To help solve these problems, the authors offer use case maps (UCMs) to provide a first-class representation of whole-system behaviour patterns, at a level above details. To illustrate the approach, they apply it to a classical distributed system problem of a kind that agent systems must be capable of solving, namely feature interaction in telephony.