The paper is aiming at identifying a taxonomy to characterize meta-process categories, and their characteristics. The taxonomy will be applied t o several existing software process-centered support environments (PSEs) and their support technologies. Up t o now, meta-process has been poorly understood, and thus hardly exploited properly. In some PSEs, metaprocess is however supported but its properties are not reflected clearly in any systematic framework. In this paper, some typical

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... ics of meta-processes are first recognized by clarifying the reasons why the meta-process is necessary for software development and maintenance; which eflects they have to other components or fragments of a software process; how, and when they should be accomplished; and who is responsible for performing them. These characteristics will also contribute to recognize the phases of metaprocess in software engineering. Identified characteristics and phases, serving as a framework for assessment, are then applied to evaluate five European PSEs, namely Adele2, EPOS, SPADE, Process Weaver and Process Wise Integrator. The intention of this evaluation is to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of the identified PSE systems, providing motivation for their further research and enhancement. In addition, it is also an initial step to validate and demonstrate the usefulness of this proposed assessment framework w.r.t. studying software meta-process.