Project coordination in design processes

We describe how explicit models of design processes can be used to guide and control the distributed development of complex systems. We focus on techniques which automatically infer dependencies between decisions from a process model and methods which allow to integrate planning and execution steps. Managing dependencies between decisions is a basis for improving the traceability of development processes. Switching between planning and execution of subprocesses is an inherent feature in the development of large complex systems. We conclude with a description of the CoMo-Kit system which implements the technologies mentioned above and which will use WWW technology to coordinate development processes. We work on two application domains: software engineering and urban land-use planning.