A goal-driven project management framework for multi-agent software development : the case of I-tropos

Today’s enterprise information systems have to match with their operational and organizational environment. Unfortunately, software project development method-ologies are traditionally inspired by programming concepts rather than by organiza-tional and enterprise ones. In order to reduce as much this distance, agent-orientation is emerging and has been subject to various researches over the last 10 years. Its suc-cess comes from the fact that it better meets the increasing complexity and flexibility required to develop software applications built in open-networked environments and deeply embedded into human activities. Thanks to benefits like efficient software project management, continuous organ-izational modeling and requirements acquisition, early implementation, continuous testing and modularity, iterative development is more and more used by software engineering professionals especially within object-oriented technologies through the Unified Process. Most multi-agent systems development methodologies only use a waterfall development life cycle or advice their users to proceed iteratively without offering a strong project management framework to support that way of proceeding. Consequently they are not suited for the development of huge and complex user-intensive applications. This dissertation presents a research aimed to build an original agent-oriented software development methodology using an iterative life cycle called I-Tropos. The method fills up the traditional Tropos life cycle gaps and offers a goal-oriented project management framework to support project stakeholders when apply-ing the method. The later covers several dimensions including risk, quality, time and process management. The methodology is validated on a real life case study in the steel industry and is supported by DesCARTES Architect, a CASE-Tool introduced in the dissertation.