# Comparison of Multi-Agent Platform Usability for Industrial-Grade Applications
## 6 Discussion
Specifically, (1) the _state of maintenance_ was placed in the top three categories by approximately 86% of developers, (2) 56% identified the importance of _package management support_, while (3) 33% included _documentation coverage and quality_. Additionally, _automated test support_ and _automated deployment support_ were often ranked as the second and third most important categories. These results are not surprising, as all the indicated categories encapsulate methods and tools that assist in software development while ensuring a sufficient level of robustness. On the other hand, the least important categories were _adherence to modern code standards_ (selected in the top three by around 13% of developers) and _monitoring tools support_ (selected by none of the developers). Regarding _adherence to modern code standards_, this can be explained by the fact that developers using a given framework are not directly responsible for its maintenance. Therefore, as long as the functionalities work as intended,  
Figure 4: Distribution of developers based on the number of years of experience and job titles. in less critical cases, the quality of the code itself is not of the highest priority. Similarly, the configuration of monitoring tools is done/modified so rarely that its support does not have to be particularly advanced. The results of the pertinent analysis were collectively considered to construct a coverage-importance matrix. Specifically, (1) the conclusions drawn from the evaluation of the state of selected agent platforms (described in Section 5), as well as (2) patterns recognized within existing agent platforms surveys [40; 43], were used to determine the coverage for each individual category. The category was classified as _none_ when there were almost no platforms that satisfied or had features that would give considerable potential to satisfy a given category. Next, _low_ coverage was assigned to the categories supported by a modest number of agent platforms (e.g., for _adherence to modern code standards_, one can mention SPADE), but have plenty of platforms that do not address them at all. On the other hand, the _medium_ coverage was assigned for the categories that are at least partially addressed by the majority of agent platforms, but still not fully covered by most. The categories would have been of _high_ coverage if almost all agent platforms had offered features that fully addressed them. Additionally, the developers' responses were used to specify the importance. In particular, (1) the categories placed in the top three selections by developers more than 10 times were considered of _high importance_, (2) those selected more than 5 times were of _medium importance_, and (3) the remaining categories were of _low importance_. The resulting matrix is presented in Figure 6.  
The fields indicated in red mark the technological areas of AOSE where the most attention is needed. As can be observed, this group currently encompasses almost all categories. The most severe issues are in the domains of _automated deployment support_ and _automated test support_, which have the highest importance and an absolute lack of coverage, as it has been pointed out in Section 5. Significant work is also required in _package management support_ and _state of maintenance_. Here, note that while discussing the technical state of agent platforms, it was noted that many of them are still not deployed in central, open-access repositories. Furthermore, platforms from the representative group tend to use outdated code practices, making them less robust. Finally, framework's ease-of-use and its reliability are among the most essential features that developers seek, thereby these two issues should also receive considerable attention. Despite the lack of coverage in contemporary AOSE tools, it seems that the _possibility of integration with external services_ can be addressed later, as this category was assigned slightly lower importance. The last category in this group is _monitoring tools support_.