This paper shows the evolution of a software engineering environment (SEE) called PROSOFT to support the formal development of groupware applications. This environment, which is centered in the data-driven approach for software development, evolved to support cooperation in the software development process. Its transition is founded in a client/server communication model called Distributed PROSOFT that provides software mechanisms to permit concurrent use of the environment resources. Thus, this paper presents a formal model that provides an object middleware with synchronous handling and version support for the objects created with the software tools integrated to the environment. Cooperative PROSOFT is presented as an architecture for the formal development of groupware applications that permits the formal validation of cooperative applications specified under its paradigm. A consequence of this work is the integration of the advantages found in formal specification techniques to the groupware development that provides the development of higher quality groupware applications than those obtained with the use of traditional techniques.Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI)