Distributed software development and VSF

A development project is a highly complex, distributed process, comprising a large number of highly inter-dependent parallel activities. This complexity is the motivation behind the desire to use technology, exemplified by computer-based tools, to simplify the management and performance of the process. There are three general directions from which the provision of automated support for the development process may be approached, summarised as the process view, the product view and the construction view. The author discusses open systems solutions to the problems of computer support. He looks at the Virtual Software Factory approach in which the technology provides a unified formal definition of the method to be supported, and a kernel environment for the execution of such a specification, in the form of a CASE tool supporting that method