The ‘whole of process’ vision is a preliminary framework proposed in Toward Agentic Software Engineering Beyond Code: Framing Vision, Values, and Vocabulary for organizing agentic software engineering (SE) around the entire SE lifecycle rather than coding activity alone. It extends across five high-level core areas, approached iteratively by human and agent actors — single agents or multi-agent systems — collaborating in activities at varying levels of AI agency, depicted as a slider kept under human control. The paper presents it as a preliminary ‘first look’ rather than a definitive agentic SE process model.
Usage
The vision covers five areas, each spanning associated activities, actors, and artefacts (AAA): Agentic SE Ethical Alignment — alignment with safe AI laws and regulations at both the micro (project, company) and macro (domain, region, country, international) levels, introduced as a new, first and central area given AI’s increasing capabilities, agency, and potential for wide-scale societal impact. Agentic Requirements Engineering — software requirements concerns such as customer, user, and subject-matter-expert input, quality requirements, and cascading ethical requirements. Agentic Design — software design concerns such as architecture, UI, UX, and design for human benefit and equity. Agentic Development — software code design, production, testing, reviewing, and repairing, the area the paper says already has a head-start through emerging visions and datasets such as Structured Agentic Software Engineering (SASE) and AIDev. Agentic Operations — deployment, maintenance, and operations (e.g. Ops/DevOps/DevSecOps). The paper notes these area descriptions are high-level and will need to be fleshed out in collaboration with area experts, including relevant research questions, example scenarios, and specific challenges.
Related Terms
CRAFT Values and Principles for Agentic SE, Structured Agentic Software Engineering (SASE)