Dealing with Adaptive Multi-agent Organizations in the Gaia Methodology

Changes and adaptations are always necessary after the deployment of a multiagent system (MAS), as well as of any other type of software systems. Some of these changes may be simply perfective and have local impact only. However, adaptive changes to meet changed situations in the operational environment of the MAS may have global impact on the overall design. In this paper, we analyze the issue of continuous design change/adaptation in a MAS organization, and the specific problem of how to properly model/design a MAS so as to make it ready to adaptation. Following, the paper focuses on the Gaia methodology and analyzes – also with the help of an illustrative example – its suitability in supporting and facilitating adaptive changes in MASs organizations, and its advantages and limitations with this regard over a number of different agent-oriented methodologies.