An Autonomy Aware Metamodel for Human AI Collaboration in Software Engineering
TL;DR
This work provides a conceptual foundation for governance-aware, adaptable, and AI-first software engineering methods by proposing a metamodel that treats autonomy not as a fixed property of an actor, but as a derived, situation-dependent authority assignment determined by task, context, and collaboration pattern.
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shifting software engineering from tool-supported processes towards AI-first collaboration, where authority is dynamically distributed across human and artificial actors. However, existing method engineering approaches assume static, human-centric control and provide limited support explicitly capturing evolving autonomy. This paper presents a vision for autonomy-aware method engineering by proposing a metamodel that treats autonomy not as a fixed property of an actor, but as a derived, situation-dependent authority assignment determined by task, context, and collaboration pattern. The metamodel formalizes autonomy through four authority dimensions: task execution, task decomposition, task initiation, and collaboration reconfiguration. Through an analytical instantiation with a multi-agent requirements analysis tool, we illustrate how the metamodel supports dynamic authority assignment. This work provides a conceptual foundation for governance-aware, adaptable, and AI-first software engineering methods.