Requirements specification via activity diagrams for agent-based systems

• Published in: Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems 2017-05, Vol.31 (3), p.423-468
• Main Authors: Abushark, Yoosef, Miller, Tim, Thangarajah, John, Winikoff, Michael, Harland, James
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Design modifications; Hierarchies; Maintainability; Prometheus; Requirements specifications; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction
• ISSN: 1387-2532; 1573-7454
• DOI: 10.1007/s10458-016-9327-7

Goal-oriented agent systems are increasingly popular for developing complex applications that operate in highly dynamic environments. As with any software these systems have to be designed starting with the specification of system requirements. In this paper, we extend a popular agent design methodology, Prometheus, and improve the understandability and maintainability of requirements by automatically generating UML activity diagrams from existing requirements models; namely scenarios and goal hierarchies. This approach aims to overcome some of the ambiguity present in the current requirements specification in Prometheus and provide more structure for representing variations. Even though our approach is grounded in Prometheus, it can be generalised to all the methodologies that support similar notions in specifying requirements (i.e. notions of goals and scenarios). We present our approach and an evaluation based on user experiments. The evaluation showed that the activity diagram based approach enhances people’s understanding of the requirements, makes it easier to modify requirements, and easier to check them against the detailed design of the agents for coverage.