Cooperative methods and tools for distributed software processes

The goal of this book is to provide recent results on methods and tools to support collaboration in distributed software engineering processes. More and more companies are moving from traditional software factory models towards virtual organisation models, where independent institutions, departments, and groups of specialised individuals converge in a temporary network with the aim of utilising a competitive advantage or solving a specific problem.

Workflow and computer supported cooperative work technologies are primary enablers for virtual organisations and project teams, as people and institutions in a network make substantially more use of computer mediated channels than physical presence to interact and cooperate. This book collects research contributions from several authors of different countries and includes latest results from three research projects funded by the European Union within the Information Society Technologies (IST) 5th Framework Programme.

Aniello Cimitile is a full professor of computer science and the chancellor of the University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy. His research interests are in Software Engineering, in particular in software maintenance and evolution, reverse engineering, reengineering, and testing. Prof. Cimitile is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice, published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Andrea De Lucia is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy. He received a PhD in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Naples "Federico II" (Italy) and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Durham (UK). His research interests are in Software Engineering, in particular in workflow management, software maintenance, reengineering, program comprehension, and source code analysis.

Harald Gall is an associate professor of applied computer science at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. He received a PhD and an MSc in computer science from the same University. His research interests are in distributed systems with focus on software architecture, reverse engineering, software maintenance and evolution, and mobile and distributed collaboration.