Engaging Stakeholders with Agent-Oriented Requirements Modelling

One advantage of using the agent paradigm for software engineering is that the concepts used for high-level modelling, such as roles, goals, organisations, and interactions, are accessible to many different stakeholders. Existing research demonstrates that including the stakeholders in the modelling of systems for as long as possible improves the quality of the development and final system because inconsistencies and incorrect behaviour are more likely to be detected early in the development process. In this paper, we propose three changes to the typical requirements engineering process found in AOSE methodologies, with the aim of including stakeholders over the requirements engineering process, effectively using stakeholders as modellers. These changes are: withholding design commitment, delaying the definition of the system boundary, and delaying the stakeholder 'sign-off' of the requirements specification. We discuss our application of these changes to a project with an industry partner, and present anecdotal evidence to suggest that these changes can be effective in maintaining stakeholder involvement.