Parallel programming is seen as an effective technique to improve the performance of computationally-intensive programs. This is done at the cost of increasing the complexity of the program, since new issues must be addressed for a concurrent application. Parallel programming environments provide a way for users to reap the benefits of concurrent programming while reducing the effort required to create them. The CO2P3S parallel programming system is one such tool which uses a pattern-based approach to create a parallel program. Using the Cowichan Problems, this paper demonstrates that the CO2P3S system contains a sufficient number of parallel patterns to implement a wide variety of applications. This characteristic is called the utility of a system. Code metrics and performance results are presented for the various applications to show the usability of the CO2P3S system and its ability to reduce programming effort, while producing programs with reasonable performance. Finally, the ...