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Agent Based Modelling of Software Organisations

Agent Based Modelling of Software Organisations. David Hales Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. http://www.davidhales.com http://cfpm.org Christopher Douce Feedback Instruments, Crowborough, UK. Background Motivation:.

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Agent Based Modelling of Software Organisations

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  1. Agent Based Modelling of Software Organisations David Hales Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. http://www.davidhales.com http://cfpm.org Christopher Douce Feedback Instruments, Crowborough, UK.

  2. Background Motivation: • Agent Based Social Simulation (ABSS), (see Journal of Artificial Societies - JASSS) • Cultural Evolution – Memetics (see Journal of Memetics - JOM) • Social / Cultural nature of “work practices” • Applicable to Software Organisations? • Information Artifacts - memes? (Green / Perry) • Informal social networks (Chris Douce)

  3. Motivation Currently working on FIRMA (FP5) project • ESRC fellowship – Negotiation • ABSS models need to be informed by specific and contextualised empirical work • Seems work within PPIG can help in this? • Possible collaboration leading to grant application(s)? • Produce a bench-top experimental lab – SimCity

  4. So what’s an ABSS? • Multiple interacting agents • Various possible levels of “intelligence” • Adaptation, Beliefs, Intentions, Goals • Other techniques… • Emergent properties – phenomena • Levels of abstraction (artificial societies / artificial life)

  5. ABSS / Organisational Culture • Organisational structures / compared (Carley et al - CMU) • Organisational “culture” THE major factor in understanding / improving software organisational performance (Curtis 1998) • How to model organisational culture within a software organisation (?? Informational artifacts – a way in? Perry 1998) – Chancey et al 1998 (Brahms – but not dynamic, no learning) • Distributed Cognition – Hutchins 1995 – emergent cognition?

  6. Constructing and ABSS Ontology – Needed • Francoise Detienne – applicable: • Viewpoints (confrontation) • Roles • Protocols • All above can adapt too (how ambitions?) • Time and Space issues

  7. Considering Models • Psychological models • Comprehension and cognitive models • Cognitive psychology: evaluation and testing of ‘reasoning’ models • Consideration: modelling software cognition? • Social aspects of software development?

  8. KISS – Abstraction – Informational Artifacts • Agents have skills and goals and viewpoits • Tasks require syncronised combinations of time, skills and informational artifacts • The combination and distribution of IA’s can characterise the “culture” (formal and informal) of an organisation(?) • The dynamics and interactions of artifacts (through agent minds) captures organsational practice and adaption(?) • “Computational Memetics” (?) – very abstract – often follow a biological tradition… can we use these ideas to begin the modelling enterprise.

  9. Two extreme forms of organization • Open Source Community – bottom up, synch comms, web-based IA’s – publicly viewable • Classical hierarchy – top down, management layers, sync-face-to-face. Formals meetings, internal docs and source code. • Can we decontextualise tasks?

  10. Further References: • Snorkel, A. (1989) A modern approach for the evaluation of distributed engineering problems. International Journal of Marine Software Systems. Vol. 9, p. 121-136.

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