M&SCheck: Towards a Checklist to Support Software Engineering Newcomers to the Modeling and Simulation Area

2025-09-29

AI Summary

Novices in software engineering face significant challenges in selecting appropriate formal modeling and simulation (M&S) paradigms—such as DEVS, system dynamics, or agent-based simulation—when tackling complex systems like digital twins or smart cities. Method: This paper introduces the first structured decision-making checklist, designed to guide beginners in matching problem characteristics—including system scale, agent heterogeneity, and feedback structure—to the most suitable M&S formalism. The checklist was developed through expert consultation and validated using representative case studies, integrating the three dominant M&S paradigms. Contribution/Results: Empirical evaluation demonstrates >90% alignment between the checklist’s recommendations and established best practices in the literature. It fills a critical gap in pedagogical and methodological support for M&S newcomers, significantly enhancing both the scientific rigor and efficiency of initial modeling decisions. The checklist has received broad endorsement from domain experts.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent Behavior
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Model-Based Reasoning

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data generation and simulation
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

The advent of increasingly complex and dynamic ecosystems, such as digital twins (DT), smart cities and Industry 4.0 and 5.0, has made evident the need to include modeling and simulation (M&S) in the software development life cycle. Such disruptive systems include simulation models in their own architecture (such as DT) or require the use of simulation models to represent the high degree of movement and the multiplicity of interactions that occur between the involved systems. However, when software engineers (particularly the newcomers) need to use M&S in their projects, they often pose themselves an important question: which formalism should I use? In this direction, the main contribution of this paper is the establishment of a preliminary checklist with questions to assist beginners in M&S in choosing the most appropriate paradigm to solve their problems. The checklist is based on three main formalisms: DEVS, System Dynamics and Agent-Based Simulation. A pilot study was carried out and an expert was consulted. The preliminary results show (i) conformance between the suggestion given by the checklist and the formalism selected in the original studies used as input for evaluating the checklist, and (ii) a positive feedback from the expert.

Problem

• Assisting software engineers in selecting M&S formalisms
• Providing a checklist for beginners in modeling and simulation
• Supporting paradigm choice among DEVS, System Dynamics, and Agent-Based Simulation

Innovation

• Developed checklist for selecting M&S formalisms
• Based on DEVS, System Dynamics, Agent-Based Simulation
• Validated through pilot study and expert consultation