In the soft-to-hard technical spectrum: Where is software engineering?

In the computer journals and tabloids, there have been a plethora of articles written about the software engineering field. But while advocates of the need for an engineering approach to software development, it is impressive how many authors have treated the subject of software engineering without adequately addressing the fundamentals of what engineering as a discipline consists of. A discussion is presented of the various related facets of this issue in a logical framework to advance the thesis that the software development process is necessarily an engineering process. The purpose is to examine more of the details of the issue of whether or not the design and development of software for digital computer processing systems should be both viewed and treated as a legitimate field of professional engineering. Also, the type of academic and professional level education programs that would be required to support a software engineering discipline is examined

Graduate Curricula in Software Engineering and Software Assurance: Need and Recommendations

In discussions about the development and use of computer systems and software products, the term “professional software engineer” is used repeatedly. In the last two decades there has been significant effort devoted to enhancing and advancing the state of professional software engineering (SwE) – new software engineering processes, methods, tools, and practices; creation of a software engineering body of knowledge [1]; development of a code of ethics and professional conduct [2], and software certification and licensing programs [3] . In 1989 the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University published a landmark report on graduate education in software engineering [4]. The guidelines in that report were used by several universities in establishing graduate software engineering degree programs that helped address the problem of improving professional software engineering. Since then, software’s scale, complexity, and criticality have accelerated; yet, until recently, no significant effort has been made to revisit and update the original SEI guidelines. This paper discusses two related efforts to provide guidance about improving professional software engineering through graduate education: a project which produced the Graduate Software Engineering 2009 (GSwE2009): Curriculum Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering [5] and a current SEI project which is developing a Master of Software Assurance Reference Curriculum (MSwA2010)

Computing Curriculum-Software Engineering: Its Impacts on Professional Software Engineering Education

The computing curriculum-software engineering (CCSE) volume and its impacts on professional software engineering education are discussed. The CCSE is an excellent cucciculum document that defines the body of knowledge for undergraduate software engineering students. It is perfectly legitimate for CCSE to recommend software engineers to adhere to the guideline in the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, that 'software engineers must commit themselves to making software engineering a beneficial and respected profession'. The CCSE Final Report proves to be an excellent and comprehensive curriculum document specifying a body of knowledge for software engineerrs.published_or_final_versionThe 28th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference Proceedings, Hong Kong, China, 28-30 September 2004, v. 1, p. 176-17

Closing the gap between software engineering education and industrial needs

According to different reports, many recent software engineering graduates often face difficulties when beginning their professional careers, due to misalignment of the skills learnt in their university education with what is needed in industry. To address that need, many studies have been conducted to align software engineering education with industry needs. To synthesize that body of knowledge, we present in this paper a systematic literature review (SLR) which summarizes the findings of 33 studies in this area. By doing a meta-analysis of all those studies and using data from 12 countries and over 4,000 data points, this study will enable educators and hiring managers to adapt their education / hiring efforts to best prepare the software engineering workforce

Software Engineering Education Needs More Engineering

To what extent is “software engineering” really “engineering” as this term is commonly understood? A hallmark of the products of the traditional engineering disciplines is trustworthiness based on dependability. But in his keynote presentation at ICSE 2006 Barry Boehm pointed out that individuals’, systems’, and peoples’ dependency on software is becoming increasingly critical, yet that dependability is generally not the top priority for software intensive system producers. Continuing in an uncharacteristic pessimistic vein, Professor Boehm said that this situation will likely continue until a major software-induced system catastrophe similar in impact to the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe stimulates action toward establishing accountability for software dependability. He predicts that it is highly likely that such a software-induced catastrophe will occur between now and 2025. It is widely understood that software, i.e., computer programs, are intrinsically different from traditionally engineered products, but in one aspect they are identical: the extent to which the well-being of individuals, organizations, and society in general increasingly depend on software. As wardens of the future through our mentoring of the next generation of software developers, we believe that it is our responsibility to at least address Professor Boehm’s predicted catastrophe. Traditional engineering has, and continually addresses its social responsibility through the evolution of the education, practice, and professional certification/licensing of professional engineers. To be included in the fraternity of professional engineers, software engineering must do the same. To get a rough idea of where software engineering currently stands on some of these issues we conducted two surveys. Our main survey was sent to software engineering academics in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Among other items it sought detail information on their software engineering programs. Our auxiliary survey was sent to U.S. engineering institutions to get some idea about how software engineering programs compared with those in established engineering disciplines of Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering. Summaries of our findings can be found in the last two sections of our paper

Worse Than Spam: Issues In Sampling Software Developers

Background: Reaching out to professional software developers is a crucial part of empirical software engineering research. One important method to investigate the state of practice is survey research. As drawing a random sample of professional software developers for a survey is rarely possible, researchers rely on various sampling strategies. Objective: In this paper, we report on our experience with different sampling strategies we employed, highlight ethical issues, and motivate the need to maintain a collection of key demographics about software developers to ease the assessment of the external validity of studies. Method: Our report is based on data from two studies we conducted in the past. Results: Contacting developers over public media proved to be the most effective and efficient sampling strategy. However, we not only describe the perspective of researchers who are interested in reaching goals like a large number of participants or a high response rate, but we also shed light onto ethical implications of different sampling strategies. We present one specific ethical guideline and point to debates in other research communities to start a discussion in the software engineering research community about which sampling strategies should be considered ethical.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Proceedings of the 2016 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2016), ACM, 201

Assessing the Unseen: Roles of Confidentiality and Trust in Software Engineering Work-based Learning Programmes [Poster]

A typical academic degree focused on software engineering has little practical relationship with the industry it is named for, other than the occasional placement or internship. Unlike other professions such as medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences, candidates do not need to participate in significant professional practice to earn their degree. Indeed, if we consider a traditional academic software engineering student they probably have far more experience constructing shiny new ‘green-field’ systems, than maintaining the old ‘brown-field’ systems found in industry, and generating most professional work. Consequently, there is growing enthusiasm for work-based learning programmes that provide an opportunity for candidates to cement abstract academic theory in concrete personal experience. Work-based learning software engineering students earn their degree by combining theory with actual practice in a professional environment. Nevertheless, the intangible outcomes for much of software engineering has led to an industry obsessed with confidentiality, driven by concerns of employees smuggling source code to competitors or regulators. This obsession potentially presents a barrier to work-based learning schemes as employers prevent outsiders, even close higher education partners, from observing the systems and the source code that learners are working on. Learners may have the opportunity for concrete personal experience, but educators are barred from observing any such experience. However, confidentiality agreements may not necessarily present barriers to assessment, but instead provide an opportunity to assess comprehension and transferable skills by requiring abstract descriptions and reports. This is the converse to the problem in some programming courses, where students submit code without demonstrating that they understand it and can discuss it in terms of the concepts taught. In this talk and accompanying poster we explore some models for software engineering work-based learning programmes that have the potential to maintain confidentiality while assessing learners’ comprehension and ability. We invite discussion and criticism from conference attendees of the presented models, and are interested in potential partners for future collaboration

Educating professional software engineers: pathways and progress in the Australian experience

Australia has seized the international initiative in the recognition of software engineers as professionals. Of the 37 universities in Australia offering undergraduate courses in computing, eleven offer courses in software engineering which are accredited by the Institute of Engineers, Australia (IEAust) and which may lead the graduate to membership of the Institute. In this way, the Institute has plausible claim to being the first national professional engineering body in the world to have accredited four-year undergraduate software engineering degrees as professional qualifications. The paper traces the development of the relationship between the Institute of Engineers and the computing industry and looks at the changes this relationship has wrought in the content and emphasis of tertiary software engineering educatio