Large distributed systems cannot be centrally managed by a human administrator anymore. There is a clear need for these systems to be equipped with self-management functionalities, such as self-adaptation to changing environments, self-optimisation for best performance, self-healing and self-compensation for component failures. Some examples are fault-tolerant IC-architectures, decentralized sensor networks and self-adapting production systems.

Such systems have also been recently referred to as "Organic Computing Systems" able to organise themselves, and to adapt dynamically to the current conditions of their environment.

In 2005 the German research council (DFG) started a priority research program (SPP1183) on Organic Computing, which clearly indicates the growing interest for this emergent technology. Most of the organisers of this workshop are involved in this program, within which significant advances have already been made.

The goal of this full-day workshop on Organic Computing at SE 2007 conference is to bring together Organic Computing scientists and Software Engineering researchers, to discuss engineering solutions for design, development and control of organic computing systems; and to investigate the interest of the concepts of organic computing for designing distributed systems and multi-agent environments.