Just wrapped up a fantastic and intensive week of research at the 2026 Workshop on Continuous Software Engineering (CSE), part of the highly successful workshop series at McGill University’s Bellairs Research Institute, Holetown, Barbados, organized by Prof Gunter Mussbacher, Prof Benoit Combemale, and Dr Jessie Galasso. Since 2010, these 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, the workshops aim to strengthen the research community, identify best practices, and explore new research directions. The typical outcomes include: conceptual models on the alignment between the different practices, activities, and tools; comprehensive visions on the topic; case studies, etc.
This year’s topic, 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. The workshop chiefly focused on 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 aimed to explore how it can be leveraged as a unique opportunity to improve software qualities and software engineers’ experience.
This has been quite an experience. Major thanks to the organizers for the successful and fun week!
