Design of A Multi-Agent System Architecture for the Scrum Methodology

The objective of this paper is to design a multi-agent system architecture for the Scrum methodology. Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for software development which is flexible, adaptable and highly productive. An agent is a system situated within and a part of an environment that senses the environment and acts on it, over time, in pursuit of its own agenda and so as to effect what it senses in the future (Franklin and Graesser, 1996). To our knowledge, this is first attempt to include software agents in the Scrum framework. Furthermore, our design covers all the stages of software development. Alternative approaches were only restricted to the analysis and design phases. This Multi-Agent System (MAS) Architecture for Scrum acts as a design blueprint and a baseline architecture that can be realised into a physical implementation by using an appropriate agent development framework. The development of an experimental prototype for the proposed MAS Architecture is in progress. It is expected that this tool will provide support to the development team who will no longer be expected to report, update and manage non-core activities daily.