Software Artifacts as Autonomous Agents

In this paper, a number of problems of conventional automated software engineering support environments are described. These problems are related to the functional approach these environments take, the lack of initiative these systems exhibit and the causal connection gap between design information and the operational entity. As an alternative, we suggest an autonomous agent approach. Each artifact is modelled as an autonomous agent that is responsible for its own development. Artifacts are organised in specialisation hierarchies which can be traversed by agents. As a consequence, the methodology needs to be inverted, i.e. specified from the artifact’s perspective rather than from the software engineer’s perspective.