Many of the applications in Multi-Agent Information Systems (MAISs)
are activities (set of interdependent tasks) composed by set of
sub-activities. A task is an atomic activity executed by a single agent,
where as a sub-activity consists of one or more interdependent tasks that
can be delegated to other agents. We undertake our work in the context
of Capability-Based and Event Driven Activity Management System (CapBasED-AMS).
In a delegation driven multi-agent information system, an agent delegates
certain sub-activities to other agents. In such environments, it is very
much required to provide scheduling facilities where activities can be
speeded-up. Although there is a significant amount of work on static
and dynamic scheduling of activities (e.g. earliest deadline first, precedence
constraints scheduling), in all of the existing work when a task is submitted
for execution by the scheduler its order for execution is fixed. On the
other hand, when real life agent-based information system applications
are executing in a highly competitive environment; unpredictable events
force a user/agent to request an acceleration of his/her activity. For
such applications, the MAIS must have the ability to “adjust” and speed-up
specific activities. In this paper, we model the execution of activities
in a delegation driven MAIS. We formulate the speed-up problem and propose
an algorithm that consistently and efficiently speeds-up activities. Thus,
we look at the core system support required for speeding up activities
in an MAIS.