The necessity of having processes for distributed development is a well known but still very challenging topic in the context of globalization. In order to stay competitive in a rough business environment, attractive products need to be developed constantly, which makes the products itself more and more complex. To be able to handle the development of complex products, several organizations participate to ensure the products’ quality and adequate time to market. Therefore, appropriate collaboration processes need to be established that are able to handle the complexity of the overall development. This paper defines a structured approach for setting up a collaborative process environment which enables organizations for collaborations from a process perspective. Furthermore, an example of how this approach is applied in practice is provided.