Commercial Experience with Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Although there have been a number of attempts at defining agent-oriented design methodologies, none of these have been proven successful in industrial use. Over a two year period, the author was involved in a variety of commercial projects and proofs-ofconcept using a product that offered an enterprise-quality implementation of BDI-agent principles. During that time, a methodology was developed to make the most effective use of the product. This paper describes the essential features of the methodology and records the results of its successful use in five selected projects in very different application domains.