I Promise

This time we look at two, additional commitment operations: delegate and assign.  Commitments relate debtors (the agents making the commitment and the agents who are responsible for satisfying it) and creditors (the beneficiaries of the commitment).    But sometimes, one agent makes the commitment, but another agent becomes responsible for satisfying it.  At other times, one agent negotiates the benefits of a commitment, but wants to transfer those benefits to another agent.   So after the commitment has been created, we may want to change either the debtors or the creditors or both.

For example, my Manager makes a commitment to his Executive to do some work and give a presentation on the results of the analysis.

CC1 = C(Manager, Executive, receiveRequirements, performTask and givePresentation)

Then he delegates this commitment to me.

CC1.delegate(Scott)

Now, I am on the hook to satisfy the commitment because I’m now the debtor, not my Manager.  Note that the identity of the commitment (CC1) is not changed by these operations; it is still CC1 even after being delegated.

CC1 = C(Scott, Executive, receiveRequirements, performTask and givePresentation)

Now let’s say, the original Executive creditor decides that her manager (SeniorExecutive) really needs to see the resulting presentation instead.  So she can assign the commitment, which changes the creditor for commitment CC1.

CC1.assign(SeniorExecutive)
CC1 = C(Scott, SeniorExecutive, receiveRequirements, performTask and givePresentation)

Many papers use the operation delegate to change debtors and assign to change creditors, as I’ve described here.  However, in my work, I use the more generic transfer operation to do either delegate or assign.  This is just a low-level detail, since both have the same effect.

Delegate and assign further demonstrates the flexibility of commitments.  Commitments explicitly capture an important type of relationship between agents; they capture something that debtors should do in the future.