A Deontic Formalism for Co-ordinating Software Development in Virtual Software Corporations

The concept of the Virtual Software Corporation (VSC) has recently become a practical reality as a result of advances in communication and distributed technologies. However, there are significant difficulties with the management of the software development process within a VSC. The main problem is the significantly increased communicational complexity of the process model for such developments. The more classic managerial hierarchy is generally replaced by a "flatter" network of commitments. Therefore new solution approaches are required to provide the necessary process support. The purpose of this paper is to present a solution approach which models the process based on deontic logic. The approach has been validated against a case study where it was used to model commitments and inter-human communications within the software development process of a VSC. The use of the formalism is exemplified through a prototype system using a layered multi-agent architecture.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: WETICE
• Authors: Zsolt Haag, Richard Foley, Julian Newman
• Keywords: Emerging Technology, Necessary Process Support, Software Development Process, Virtual Software Corporation, WETICE 1998