Concurrent Engineering support in Software Engineering

The evolution of software engineering methodology, from waterfall to spiral, from spiral to agile, indicates that high concurrency, iterative development and short cycles are key factors for effective software engineering. It is widely accepted that supporting (i.e., formalizing controlling, automating and optimizing) concurrent engineering processes is needed to increase predictability of cost, quality and development time. Unfortunately, current systems (e.g., workflows, software configuration management, ...) are too simple and deterministic; they do not include real support for concurrent engineering. We claim this shortcoming is one of the major reasons why current workflow and process support do not significantly help in the support of software engineering. In this paper we present the Celine system, which extends workflows with the definition of high-level executable description of concurrent engineering and therefore contributes to provide effective control over cost, quality and development time