Planners will differ not only in their planning hierarchies, but also in their cognitive maps relating actions and effects. Again, interface agents can help planners be explicit about their cognitive maps, and negotiating agents can work together to arrive at a common cognitive map underlying a preferred planning option. Here analysts will disagree on both cognitive maps expressed in formal models, and on validation criteria used to select among models. Interface agents can help analysts to perform formal modeling, they can also help them in formulating their validation schema supporting model choice. Negotiating agents can then assist analysts in arriving at common validation schema.
Agents can also assist in simulating work flow systems.
Systems can be represented by agents functioning as the nodes of a work flow. Agents can be assigned tasks they perform according to rules programmed in the agents and triggered by events and their parameters. Work flow items can be defined to provide agents something to process. When the simulation is run various characteristics of the work flow design can be evaluated. Conclusion Software agents are among the most significant technical developments in IT today.