Structural unity of product, process and organization form in the GIPSY process support framework

Integration is essential for the process support of cooperative software engineering, but is often restricted to technical aspects. In this paper we focus on organizational integration, which encompasses the common understanding of the structure and evolution of product, process and organization form shared among all process participants (users and tools). We use a similar 3D model to represent the structure and evolution of a software product and its process. Additionally, we propose that organization forms are only built dynamically for ongoing processes, adapting structure and hierarchy of the corresponding process. This leads to the structural unity of product, process and organization form, which we believe to provide a shared understanding of organization. Process support environments based on this model provide organizational integration in a simple, transparent and consistent way.