Software engineering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A software engineer programming for the Wikimedia Foundation

Software engineering (SWE) is the application of engineering to the development of software in a

systematic method.[1][2][3]
Typical formal definitions of Software Engineering are:

"Research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and
network distribution software for medical, industrial, military, communications, aerospace,
business, scientific, and general computing applications."[4]

"the systematic application of scientific and technological knowledge, methods, and

experience to the design, implementation, testing, and documentation of software"; [5]

"The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development,

operation, and maintenance of software";[6]

"an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production"; [7]

and "the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to economically
obtain software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines."[8]

Education
Knowledge of computer programming is a prerequisite for becoming a software engineer. In 2004
the IEEE Computer Society produced the SWEBOK, which has been published as ISO/IEC
Technical Report 1979:2004, describing the body of knowledge that they recommend to be mastered
by a graduate software engineer with four years of experience. [21] Many software engineers enter the
profession by obtaining a university degree or training at a vocational school. One standard
international curriculum for undergraduate software engineering degrees was defined by the CCSE,
and updated in 2004.[22] A number of universities have Software Engineering degree programs; as of
2010, there were 244 Campus Bachelor of Software Engineering programs, 70 Online programs,
230 Masters-level programs, 41 Doctorate-level programs, and 69 Certificate-level programs in the
United States.[23]
For practitioners who wish to become proficient and recognized as professional software engineers,
the IEEE offers two certifications that extend knowledge above the level achieved by an academic

degree: Certified Software Development Associate and Certified Software Development

Professional.
In addition to university education, many companies sponsor internships for students wishing to
pursue careers in information technology. These internships can introduce the student to interesting
real-world tasks that typical software engineers encounter every day. Similar experience can be
gained through military service in software engineering.

Profession
Main article: Software engineer
Legal requirements for the licensing or certification of professional software engineers vary around
the World. In the UK, the British Computer Society licenses software engineers and members of the
society can also become Chartered Engineers (CEng), while in some areas of Canada, such as
Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario,[24] and Quebec, software engineers can hold the Professional
Engineer (P.Eng) designation and/or the Information Systems Professional (I.S.P.) designation. In
Canada, there is a legal requirement to have P.Eng when one wants to use the title "engineer" or
practice "software engineering". In Europe, Software Engineers can obtain the European
Engineer (EUR ING) professional title.
The United States, starting from 2013 offers an NCEES Professional Engineer exam for Software
Engineering, thereby allowing Software Engineers to be licensed and recognized. [25] Mandatory
licensing is currently still largely debated, and perceived as controversial. In some parts of the US
such as Texas, the use of the term Engineer is regulated by law and reserved only for use by
individuals who have a Professional Engineer license. The IEEE informs the professional engineer
license is not required unless the individual would work for public where health of others could be at
risk if the engineer was not fully qualified to required standards by the particular state. Professional
engineer licenses are specific to the state that has awarded them, and have to be regularly retaken.
The IEEE Computer Society and the ACM, the two main US-based professional organizations of
software engineering, publish guides to the profession of software engineering. The IEEE's Guide to
the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge - 2004 Version, or SWEBOK, defines the field and
describes the knowledge the IEEE expects a practicing software engineer to have. The most current
SWEBOK v3 is an updated version and was released in 2014.[26] The IEEE also promulgates a
"Software Engineering Code of Ethics".[27]

Employment
In November 2004, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 760,840 software engineers holding
jobs in the U.S.; in the same time period there were some 1.4 million practitioners employed in the
U.S. in all other engineering disciplines combined. [28] Due to its relative newness as a field of study,
formal education in software engineering is often taught as part of a computer science curriculum,
and many software engineers hold computer science degrees and have no engineering background
whatsoever.[29]
Many software engineers work as employees or contractors. Software engineers work with
businesses, government agencies (civilian or military), and non-profit organizations. Some software
engineers work for themselves as freelancers. Some organizations have specialists to perform each
of the tasks in the software development process. Other organizations require software engineers to
do many or all of them. In large projects, people may specialize in only one role. In small projects,
people may fill several or all roles at the same time. Specializations include: in industry
(analysts, architects, developers, testers, technical support, middleware analysts, managers) and in
academia (educators, researchers).
Most software engineers and programmers work 40 hours a week, but about 15 percent of software
engineers and 11 percent of programmers worked more than 50 hours a week in 2008. Injuries in

these occupations are rare. However, like other workers who spend long periods in front of a
computer terminal typing at a keyboard, engineers and programmers are susceptible to eyestrain,
back discomfort, and hand and wrist problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome.[30]
The field's future looks bright according to Money Magazine and Salary.com, which rated Software
Engineer as the best job in the United States in 2006. [31] In 2012, software engineering was again
ranked as the best job in the United States, this time by CareerCast.com. [32]

Certification
The Software Engineering Institute offers certifications on specific topics like security, process
improvement and software architecture.[33] Apple, IBM, Microsoft and other companies also sponsor
their own certification examinations. Many IT certification programs are oriented toward specific
technologies, and managed by the vendors of these technologies.[34] These certification programs are
tailored to the institutions that would employ people who use these technologies.
Broader certification of general software engineering skills is available through various professional
societies. As of 2006, the IEEE had certified over 575 software professionals as a Certified Software
Development Professional (CSDP).[35] In 2008 they added an entry-level certification known as the
Certified Software Development Associate (CSDA).[36] The ACM had a professional certification
program in the early 1980s,[citation needed] which was discontinued due to lack of interest. The ACM
examined the possibility of professional certification of software engineers in the late 1990s, but
eventually decided that such certification was inappropriate for the professional industrial practice of
software engineering.[37]
In the U.K. the British Computer Society has developed a legally recognized professional
certification called Chartered IT Professional (CITP), available to fully qualified members (MBCS).
Software engineers may be eligible for membership of the Institution of Engineering and
Technology and so qualify for Chartered Engineer status. In Canada the Canadian Information
Processing Society has developed a legally recognized professional certification called Information
Systems Professional (ISP).[38] In Ontario, Canada, Software Engineers who graduate from
a Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) accredited program, successfully complete
PEO's (Professional Engineers Ontario) Professional Practice Examination (PPE) and have at least
48 months of acceptable engineering experience are eligible to be licensed through the Professional
Engineers Ontario and can become Professional Engineers P.Eng.[39] The PEO does not recognize
any online or distance education however; and does not consider Computer Science programs to be
equivalent to software engineering programs despite the tremendous overlap between the two. This
has sparked controversy and a certification war. It has also held the number of P.Eng holders for the
profession exceptionally low. The vast majority of working professionals in the field hold a degree in
CS, not SE. Given the difficult certification path for holders of non-SE degrees, most never bother to
pursue the license.

Impact of globalization
The initial impact of outsourcing, and the relatively lower cost of international human resources in
developing third world countries led to a massive migration of software development activities from
corporations in North America and Europe to India and later: China, Russia, and other developing
countries. This approach had some flaws, mainly the distance / timezone difference that prevented
human interaction between clients and developers and the massive job transfer. This had a negative
impact on many aspects of the software engineering profession. For example, some students in
the developed world avoid education related to software engineering because of the fear of offshore
outsourcing (importing software products or services from other countries) and of being displaced
by foreign visa workers.[40] Although statistics do not currently show a threat to software engineering
itself; a related career, computer programming does appear to have been affected.[41][42] Nevertheless,
the ability to smartly leverage offshore and near-shore resources via the follow-the-sun workflow has
improved the overall operational capability of many organizations.[43] When North Americans are

leaving work, Asians are just arriving to work. When Asians are leaving work, Europeans are arriving
to work. This provides a continuous ability to have human oversight on business-critical processes
24 hours per day, without paying overtime compensation or disrupting a key human resource, sleep
patterns.
While global outsourcing has several advantages, global - and generally distributed - development
can run into serious difficulties resulting from the distance between developers. This is due to the
key elements of this type of distance that have been identified as geographical, temporal, cultural
and communication (that includes the use of different languages and dialects of English in different
locations).[44] Research has been carried out in the area of global software development over the last
15 years and an extensive body of relevant work published that highlights the benefits and problems
associated with the complex activity. As with other aspects of software engineering research is
ongoing in this and related areas.

Related fields
Software engineering is a direct sub-field of engineering and has an overlap with computer
science and management science[citation needed]. It is also considered a part of overall systems
engineering.

Controversy
Over definition
Typical formal definitions of software engineering are:

"the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development,

operation, and maintenance of software".[6]
"an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production" [7]
"the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to economically obtain
software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines" [8]

The term has been used less formally:

as the informal contemporary term for the broad range of activities that were formerly
called computer programming and systems analysis;[45]

as the broad term for all aspects of the practice of computer programming, as opposed to
the theory of computer programming, which is called computer science;[46]

as the term embodying the advocacy of a specific approach to computer programming, one
that urges that it be treated as an engineering discipline rather than an art or a craft, and
advocates the codification of recommended practices.[47]

Criticism
Software engineering sees its practitioners as individuals who follow well-defined engineering
approaches to problem-solving. These approaches are specified in various software engineering
books and research papers, always with the connotations of predictability, precision, mitigated risk
and professionalism. This perspective has led to calls for licensing, certification and codified bodies
of knowledge as mechanisms for spreading the engineering knowledge and maturing the field.

Software craftsmanship has been proposed by a body of software developers as an alternative that
emphasizes the coding skills and accountability of the software developers themselves without
professionalism or any prescribed curriculum leading to ad-hoc problem-solving (craftmanship)
without engineering (lack of predictability, precision, missing risk mitigation, methods are informal
and poorly defined). The Software Craftsmanship Manifesto extends the Agile Software
Manifesto[48] and draws a metaphor between modern software development and the apprenticeship
model of medieval Europe.
Software engineering extends engineering and draws on the engineering model, i.e. engineering
process, engineering project management, engineering requirements, engineering design,
engineering construction, and engineering validation. The concept is so new that it is rarely
understood, and it is widely misinterpreted, including in software engineering textbooks, papers, and
among the communities of programmers and crafters.
One of the core issues in software engineering is that its approaches are not empirical enough
because a real-world validation of approaches is usually absent, or very limited and hence software
engineering is often misinterpreted as feasible only in a "theoretical environment."
Dijkstra who developed computer languages in the last century refuted the concepts of "software
engineering" that was prevalent thirty years ago in the 1980s, arguing that those terms were poor
analogies for what he called the "radical novelty" of computer science:
A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As
economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The
Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is selfcontradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is
eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will
discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot." [49]

References

Abran, Alain; Moore, James W.; Bourque, Pierre; Dupuis, Robert; Tripp, Leonard L.
(2004). Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. IEEE. ISBN 0-7695-2330-7.

Sommerville, Ian (2008). Software Engineering (7 ed.). Pearson Education. ISBN 978-817758-530-8. Retrieved 10 January 2013.