The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design
. This article presents Gaia: a methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. The Gaia methodology is both general, in that it is applicable to a wide range of multi-agent systems, and comprehensive, in that it deals with both the macro-level (societal) and the micro-level (agent) aspects of systems. Gaia is founded on the view of a multi-agent system as a computational organisation consisting of various interacting roles. We illustrate Gaia through a case study (an agent-based business process management system). 1. Introduction Progress in software engineering over the past two decades has been made through the development of increasingly powerful and natural high-level abstractions with which to model and develop complex systems. Procedural abstraction, abstract data types, and, most recently, objects and components are all examples of such abstractions. It is our belief that agents represent a similar advance in abstraction: they may be used by software developers to more n...