Standardisation
Standardisation
Standards & Agent-Oriented Computing
While standards are essential in the engineering practice, and also in computational engineering areas like Web systems and programming languages, their role in agent-oriented computing is still to be clearly established.
Being an advanced research field, this might be quite an understandable, even acceptable situation. However, agent-oriented models and technologies are nowadays in the process of changing status: from experimental academic approaches to stable and reliable industry-level solutions for the engineering of complex computational systems.
Thus, the time for agent-oriented standards has finally come.
That is why, together with Ambra Molesini, I fostered the participation of the Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna to the IEEE FIPA Standards Committee in order to promote new agent-oriented standards.
Since 2008, the Alma Mater Studiorum is then a Full Member of the IEEE FIPA Standards Committee.
IEEE FIPA
FIPA (the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) is an IEEE Computer Society standards organisation that promotes agent-based technology and the interoperability of its standards with other technologies.
Founded in 1996 as an independent body of standardisation devoted to agent languages and technologies, FIPA became the 11th standard committee of IEEE in June 2005.
Since July 2008, I am the representative of the Alma Mater Studiorum in IEEE FIPA.
FIPA DPDF
Since the very beginning, our work in FIPA focussed on the standardisation of the software development process. Our experience in AOSE (Agent-Oriented Software Engineering) — in particular with the SODA methodology and within the MEnSA Project — made it clear that the role of agent-oriented abstractions and models could be essential in the engineering of complex computation systems, and at the same time (ii) the state of the AOSE field was clearly in need of a standardisation effort.
That is why, in 2008, the IEEE-FIPA DPDF WG was founded — that is, the Working Group of FIPA devoted to Design Process Documentation and Fragmentation.
The DPDF WG is co-chaired by Ambra Molesini, together with Vincent Hilaire and Massimo Cossentino.
Currently, I am one of the members of the IEEE-FIPA DPDF WG.
Standards
— Process Documentation Template
The first activity of the DPDF WG focussed on providing a standard template for documenting the software engineering process.
After three years of work, the Process Documentation Template standard was voted by the DPDF WG as an Experimental Specification on 15 June 2011, and raised to the full status of FIPA Standard on 10 January 2012.
I worked as both a contributor and a reviewer for the Process Documentation Template standard.