The emergence of agent-oriented information systems imposes a great
challenge to the current theories and methods of software quality
management. The difficulties in the development of quality information
systems are not only due to the openness of the environment, the diversity
of platforms, the vast volume of distributed information in diverse formats,
and the complicated combination of data and program, but also the dynamic
lifecycles of such systems. In the paper, we report work in progress on
agent-oriented quality management of distributed hypermedia and cooperative
information systems. We first analyze the challenges that agent-oriented
information systems impose upon established theory and technology of software
quality management. We then present our growth lifecycle model of information
systems development and outline our approach towards intelligent tool support
of quality management activities in the development of information systems.