Support for personalized learning requires further assistance than currently available with most learning management system. Software agents have been proposed as one way of providing such assistance. The paper identifies three kinds of software agents, pedagogical, function and process agents. The paper then concentrates on process agents, which guide learners to develop personalized preferred learning plans that match learner needs and then manage progress through such plans. Agent support will only be practical if widely applicable generic agents, which can be reused in many plans, can be identified. Such agents can then be adapted to particular learner needs without extensive programming. The paper identifies some generic agents for this purpose and concentrate on agents that manage progress through the learning plans.