A concept for supporting the formation of virtual corporations through negotiation

Abstract

This paper describes a system that supports software development processes in virtual software corporations. A virtual software corporation consists of a set of enterprises that cooperate in projects to fulfill customer needs. Contracts are negotiated in the whole lifecycle of a software development project. The negotiations really influence the performance of a company. Therefore, it is useful to support negotiations and planning decisions with software agents. Our approach integrates software agent approaches for negotiation support with flexible multiserver workflow engines.