Improving verification and validation in hardware/software environments. Introduction to the workshop

Software development evolved in barely half a century from an exotic and rather esoteric pioneering endeavor into a cornerstone of modern society. Unprecedented methodological advances have been made over a such a short period of time that it doesn\´t come as a surprise that one talks about the "software revolution". In fact, the "software revolution" is a "software evolution" that took place in such a short period of time that it is perceived as a revolution. third evolution stage, mastering of software-intensive product complexity. A dramatic growth of size and technical complexity of software and associated managerial complexity caused desperate attempts for improvements of the software development process to get projects and product quality under control, often guided by improvement models like SEI\´s Capability Maturity Model CMM (Paulk et al., 1993). Many companies are still struggling with this stage, while the next evolutionary stage is emerging, right now: the stage of complex product development. Products become so complex, that the product development is distributed over multiple departments, or even over several companies, involving many specialisms. Of the many problems associated with complex product development, the verification and validation process is one of the toughest.