Collaboration and composition: Issues for a second generation process language

Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined and applied to software engineering environments. The idea of using a process language to encode a software process as a "process model", and enacting this using a process-sensitive environment is now well established. Many prototype process-sensitive environments have been developed; but their use in earnest has been limited. We are designing a second generation process language which is a significant departure from current conventional thinking. Firstly a process is viewed as a set of mediated collaborations rather than a set of partially ordered activities. Secondly emphasis is given to how process models are developed, used, and enhanced over a potentially long lifetime. In particular the issue of composing both new and existing model fragments is central to our development approach. This paper outlines these features, and gives the motivations behind them. It also presents a view of process support for software engineering drawing on our decade of experience in exploiting a "first generation" process language, and our experience in designing and exploiting programming languages.