1st Workshop on Continuous Software Engineering

The 1st 1-Week Workshop on Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) at the Bellairs Research Institute of McGill University in Holetown, Barbados, is taking place from Friday, February 27th, 2026 to Friday, March 6th, 2026 with a special emphasis on modern software engineering that is no longer about building a system from scratch and deploying it once but rather about continuously evolving systems already in production.

In this context, CSE is not a new paradigm — it is the reality we face daily. Yet, despite the widespread adoption of CSE practices, many development activities such as testing, debugging, monitoring, evolution, and deployment are still treated as separate concerns, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. This timely workshop brings together leading researchers, industry partners, junior scholars, and graduate students worldwide to discuss how we can better integrate the various aspects of CSE into a smooth, continuous, and feedback-driven process. Instead of viewing continuous evolution as a risk, we aim to explore how it can be leveraged as a unique opportunity to improve software qualities and software engineers’ experience.

Engineering a software system that is not yet in production has become the exception rather than the norm. In this context, we are considering, among others, the following possible discussion topics for our workshop:

  1. Integrating development activities seamlessly — How can we break down silos, e.g., between testing, debugging, deployment, and monitoring to create a more unified engineering process?
  2. Digital Twins as a catalyst for CSE — How can virtual replicas of software systems help predict failures, support experimentation, and optimize decision-making in production environments?
  3. Embracing continuous evolution — How can we shift our mindset from seeing continuous updates as a challenge to leveraging them for faster innovation and better experience for software engineers?
  4. AI and automation in CSE — What role can machine learning and analytics play in enhancing automated debugging, testing, and anomaly detection?
  5. Security and compliance at runtime — How do we ensure that security and regulatory requirements are continuously met without slowing down software evolution?
  6. Technical debt and long-term sustainability — How can we manage technical debt while maintaining rapid software evolution?

Since 2010, our Bellairs workshops have had a strong focus on software engineering, from software composition and modularity to data and models to digital twins. By bringing together experts from various domains, we aim to strengthen the research community, identify best practices, and explore new research directions. Possible outcomes include: a conceptual model on the alignment between the different practices, activities, and tools; a comprehensive vision on the topic; case studies, etc.

We expect the workshop to be highly interactive and open-minded. The workshop’s ultimate goal is to embrace the reality of continuous software evolution, transforming it from a challenge into a strategic advantage for software engineering.