Task: Design Capability Diagram

Task sourced from Tropos

Purpose

The purpose of this task is to design the agents’ micro level (agents’ goals, beliefs, and capabilities) through agent capabilities.

Relationships

Roles	Primary Performer: MAS Designer	Additional Performers: MAS Developer
Inputs	Mandatory: MFE Tropos Analysis Agent Model	Optional: [Domain Analysis slot] [Organization - Design slot]
Outputs	Tropos Capability Diagram
Process Usage	MMF Design Agent with Tropos > Design Agent with Tropos > Design Capability Diagram Tropos > Detailed Design Phase > Design Agent > Design Capability Diagram Tropos PL Variant 2 > Domain Engineering Iteration 1..n > Domain Design Phase > Design Agent with Tropos > Design Capability Diagram

Main Description

During this task agents’ capabilities are specified in detail. Practical approaches for this task are usually proposed within specific development platforms and depend on the features of the adopted agent programming language. In other words, this task is usually strictly related to implementation choices. Moreover, the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is supporting the extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as the language which should enable the specification of agent systems. See Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology (p. 220-221) and Capability Modeling for more information.

Steps

Describing agent capabilities

Practical approaches for designing agent capabilities are usually proposed within specific development platforms and depend on the features of the adopted agent programming language.

Key Considerations

More Information

Concepts	Actor Belief Capability
Guidelines	Capability Modeling
Whitepapers	Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology