DIMMA: A Design and Implementation Methodology for Metaheuristic Algorithms - A Perspective from Software Development

Abstract

Metaheuristic algorithms will gain more and more popularity in the future as optimization problems are increasing in size and complexity. In order to record experiences and allow project to be replicated, a standard process as a methodology for designing and implementing metaheuristic algorithms is necessary. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no methodology has been proposed in literature for this purpose. This paper presents a Design and Implementation Methodology for Metaheuristic Algorithms, named DIMMA. The proposed methodology consists of three main phases and each phase has several steps in which activities that must be carried out are clearly defined in this paper. In addition, design and implementation of tabu search metaheuristic for travelling salesman problem is done as a case study to illustrate applicability of DIMMA.