[ecoop-info] IEEE FIPA Workshop on Design Process Documentation and Fragment

Ambra Molesini ambra.molesini at unibo.it
Tue May 18 10:01:47 CEST 2010


IEEE FIPA Workshop on Design Process Documentation and Fragmentation
to be held at The Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, 
and Organisations Federated Workshops (MALLOW 2010)
30th of August - 2nd of September, 2010
Domaine Valpré - Lyon, France
(Website at http://mallow2010.emse.fr/index.html)

Complex software system development with the 
agent-oriented approach requires suitable agent 
oriented modelling techniques and processes 
providing explicit support for the key 
abstractions of the agent paradigm. Several 
design processes supporting analysis, design and 
implementation of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have 
been to date proposed in the context of Agent 
Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE). Each of 
them presents different advantages when applied 
to specific problems. A unique design process can 
not be general enough to be useful to everyone 
without some kind of customisation; when 
developing a new design process, several MAS 
developers/designers prefer to use phases, models 
or elements coming from existing design processes 
in order to build up a personalised approach for 
their own problem thus spending time and 
increasing the cost for learning different approaches.
This problem can be faced by adopting the method 
engineering paradigm (more precisely the 
situational method engineering paradigm). 
Situational method engineering paradigm provides 
means for constructing ad-hoc software 
engineering processes following an approach based 
on the reuse of portions of existing design 
processes, the so called method fragments stored 
in a repository, called method base.
Method fragment or simply fragment is the 
building block of ad-hoc design processes; 
several well known approaches in literature 
present different definitions and descriptions of 
method fragment but all of them share the same 
assumption: each existing design process can be 
considered as composed of self contained 
components, the fragments. The definition of 
method fragment in every kind of situational 
method engineering approach constitutes the base 
for the extraction of fragments from existing 
design processes, for their retrieval from the 
method base and for their assembly in the new 
design process. Today it does not exist (yet) a 
unique, standard, definition of method fragment 
besides when looking at existing design 
processes, usually designers have to cope with an 
additional difficulty consisting in the lack of 
uniformity in their documentation. Other, still 
open issues, lies in the definition of techniques 
for fragment selection and composition.

The IEEE FIPA Design Process Documentation and 
Fragmentation working group is working on such 
topics in order to provide a solution to the 
raised issues in terms of a shared and easily 
adoptable specification for the documentation of 
the design process and of the process fragment.
More in details, this working group aims to 
propose a definition of method fragment to be 
used during a situational method engineering 
process, the fundamental elements it is composed 
of and the metamodel it is based on.
The first, currently undergoing, step is the 
identification of the most suitable process 
metamodel and notation: (i) for the 
representation of the existing design processes 
from which the fragments have to be extracted, 
and (ii) for the representation of fragments themselves.
This step will outcome in the definition of a 
proper template for the description of 
agent-oriented design processes. Such a template 
will, obviously, refer to the selected process 
metamodel and suggest the adoption of good 
practices in documenting existing processes as 
well as defining new ones. A refined draft of the 
template is already available from the working 
group website at: http://www.pa.icar.cnr.it/cossentino/fipa-dpdf-wg/
The final step will be the definition of the 
Method Fragment Structure and Documentation 
Template. This work will start from the results 
obtained by the old FIPA Methodology Technical Committee (years 2003-2005).
***************************
Aim of this workshop
***************************
This workshop will focus on the research and 
standardisation topics related to the activity of 
the IEEE FIPA DPDF working group. They will 
include process modelling, process documentation, 
theoretical and practical aspects of design 
process definition, the different use of 
fragments, and the definition of concepts and 
techniques related to them. Although the workshop 
is tightly related to the FIPA context, the scope 
is not limited to agent-oriented approaches but 
other points of view are of great interest to this event.
The workshop organisers specifically welcome 
papers describing applications of the 
specification drafted by this FIPA working group 
or new  specification proposals for process 
documentation, fragment definition, and process fragmentation.

A non-restrictive list of topics of interest includes:

·                Specification proposals and 
applications of the specifications already drafted by the working group
·                Situational Method Engineering (SME)
·                Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE)
·                Standards for the description of 
design processes and process/method fragments
·                Models, Metamodels and Notations 
for design processes/fragments
·                Techniques for process fragmentation
·                Techniques for fragments selection
·                Techniques for fragments composition
·                Best practices for 
defining/documenting fragments and processes
·                Theories and practical experiences in the field


*****************************
Important dates
*****************************
Important Dates:
·       June 13, 2010: Submission of Papers
·       July 08, 2010: Notification of Acceptance/ Rejection
·       July 30, 2010: Submission of Camera-Ready Copies
·       30 Aug ­ 02 Sept, 2010: Workshop


*****************************
Organisers
*****************************
·       Massimo Cossentino (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy)
·       Vincent Hilare (Université de Technologie 
de Belfort-Montbélliard, France)
·       Ambra Molesini (Alma Mater Studiorum ­ Università di Bologna)

*****************************
Program Committee (members are to be confirmed)
*****************************
C. Bernon (Univ. Paul Sabatier, FR)
G. Cabri (Univ. Modena e Reggio Emilia, IT)
S. DeLoach (Kansas State Univ., USA)
G. Fortino (Univ. Calabria, IT)
R. Fuentes Fernandez (Univ. Madrid, ES)
S. Galland (Univ. Belfort, UTBM, FR)
A. Garro (Univ. Calabria, IT)
N. Gaud (Univ. Belfort, UTBM, FR)
P. Giorgini (University of Trento, IT)
M.P. Gleizes (Univ. Paul Sabatier, FR)
A. Gomez Rodriguez(Univ. de Vigo, ES)
J. C. Gonzalez Moreno (Univ. de Vigo, ES)
Z. Guessom (Univ. LIP6, Paris, FR)
M.P. Huget (Univ. Savoie, FR)
R. Levy (Intelligent Automation, Inc, USA)
F. Migeon (Univ. Paul Sabatier, FR)
V. Morreale (Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IT)
A. Omicini (Univ. Bologna, IT)
S. Ossowski (Univ. Rey Juan Carlos, ES)
J. Pavon (Univ. Madrid, ES)
J. Pena (Univ. Seville, ES)
A. Perini (Fondazione B. Kessler, IT)
J. Ralyte (University of Geneva, CH)
W. Renz (Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, DE)
V. Seidita (University of Palermo, IT)
A. Siena (Fondazione B. Kessler, IT)
P. Storniolo (National Research Council, IT)
J. Sudeikat (Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, DE)
A. Susi (Fondazione B. Kessler, IT)
K. Taveter (Tallinn University of Technology, EE)
J.P. Tolvanen (Metacase, FI)


*****************************************************************
  Dott. Ing. Ambra Molesini, 
Ph.D 

  Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
  DEIS - Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna (I)
  phone : +39 051 2093541
  fax :   +39 051 
2093073
  mail: ambra.molesini at unibo.it
  web : http://www.lia.deis.unibo.it/Staff/AmbraMolesini/
        http://www.apice.unibo.it/xwiki/bin/view/AmbraMolesini/



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