Debates within software engineering

Many debates are raging within the software engineering community. As software becomes more pervasive, most recognize the need for better software, but few agree on how to obtain it.

Ambiguity and controversy

Main article: Controversies over the term Engineer

Typical formal definitions of software engineering are:

"the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software".

"an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production"

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

The term has been used less formally:

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

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;

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.

Some people believe that software engineering implies a certain level of academic training, professional discipline, and adherence to formal processes that often are not applied in cases of software development. A common analogy is that working in construction does not make one a civil engineer, and so writing code does not make one a software engineer. It is disputed by some - in particular by the Canadian Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) body, that the field is not mature enough to warrant the title "engineering". The PEO disputed that "software engineering" was not an appropriate name for the field since those who practiced in the field and called themselves "software engineers" were not properly licensed professional engineers, and that they should therefore not be allowed to use the name.

In each of the last few decades, at least one radical new approach has entered the mainstream of software development (e.g. Structured Programming, Object Orientation), implying that the field is still changing too rapidly to be considered an engineering discipline. Proponents argue that the supposedly radical new approaches are evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Individual commentators have disagreed sharply on how to define software engineering or its legitimacy as an engineering discipline. David Parnas has said that software engineering is, in fact, a form of engineering. Steve McConnell has said that it is not, but that it should be. Donald Knuth has said that programming is an art and a science. Edsger W. Dijkstra claimed that the terms software engineering and software engineer have been misused, particularly in the United States.

Regulatory classification

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies computer software engineers as a subcategory of "computer specialists", along with occupations such as computer scientist, programmer, and network administrator. The BLS classifies all other engineering disciplines, including computer hardware engineers, as "engineers".

The U.K. has seen the alignment of the Information Technology Professional and the Engineering Professionals.

Software engineering in Canada has seen some contests in the courts over the use of the title "Software Engineer" The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (C.C.P.E. or "Engineers Canada") will not grant a "Professional Engineer" status/license to anyone who has not completed a recognized academic engineering program.[citation needed] Engineers qualified outside Canada are similarly unable to obtain a "Professional Engineer" license. Since 2001, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board has accredited several university programs in software engineering, allowing graduates to apply for a professional engineering licence once the other prerequisites are obtained, although this does nothing to help IT professionals using the title with degrees in other fields (such as computer science).

Some of the United States of America regulate the use of terms such as "computer engineer" and even "software engineer". These states include at least Texas and Florida. Texas even goes so far as to ban anyone from writing any real-time code without an engineering license.

Right to use the word engineering

The word engineering within the term software engineering causes a lot of confusion.

The wrangling over the status of software engineering (between traditional engineers and computer scientists) can be interpreted as a fight over control of the word engineering. Traditional engineers question whether software engineers can legally use the term.

Traditional engineers (especially civil engineers and the NSPE) claim that they have special rights over the term engineering, and for anyone else to use it requires their approval. In the mid-1990s, the NSPE sued to prevent anyone from using the job title software engineering. The NSPE won their lawsuit in 48 states[citation needed]. However, SE practitioners, educators, and researchers ignored the lawsuits and called themselves software engineers anyway. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the term software engineer, too. The term engineering is much older than any regulatory body, so many believe that traditional engineers have few rights to control the term. As things stand at 2007, however, even the NSPE appears to have softened its stance towards software engineering and following the heels of several overseas precedents, is investigating a possibility of licensing software engineers in consultation with IEEE, NCEES and other groups "for the protection of the public health safety and welfare" .

In Canada, the use of the words 'engineer' and 'engineering' are controlled in each province by self-regulating professional engineering organizations, often aligned with geologists and geophysicists, and tasked with enforcement of the governing legislation. The intent is that any individual holding themselves out as an engineer (or geologist or geophysicist) has been verified to have been educated to a certain accredited level, and their professional practice is subject to a code of ethics and peer scrutiny. This system was originally designed for the practise of engineering where public safety is a concern, but extends to other branches of engineering as well, including electronics and software.

In New Zealand, IPENZ, the professional engineering organization entrusted by the New Zealand government with legal power to license and regulate chartered engineers (CPEng), recognizes software engineering as a legitimate branch of professional engineering and accepts application of software engineers to obtain chartered status provided he or she has a tertiary degree of approved subjects. Software Engineering is included but Computer Science is normally not. 

The United States Patent and Trademark Office considers computer science to be a legitimate field within the "technological arts". Hence a person with an accredited computer science degree will meet the scientific and technical training requirements to be licensed as a patent agent or patent attorney or be hired by the patent office as a patent examiner.

Technological arts include engineering (e.g. chemical engineering) and natural sciences (e.g. biology). Technological arts have not included abstract reasoning (e.g. mathematics) or the social sciences (e.g. sociology).

The fields of data engineering, knowledge engineering, user interface engineering, and so on have similar concerns about the term engineering. Even smaller or newer fields of biological engineering, safety engineering, and corrosion engineering have these concerns.

It is important to remember that the foundational subjects of traditional engineering, like advanced calculus and physical science, are tools and do not fully define what engineering actually is. The aspects of innovation and professional judgment apply to both engineering and software development. The well known axiom that we can strive to build systems that are better, faster, and cheaper, but not all three at the same time, applies equally well to traditional engineering as it does to software development.

Substance versus metaphor

Some believe that the name SE means that practitioners must also be traditional engineers. Others believe that engineering is only a metaphor that SEs should apply appropriately.

Substance

Those who define software engineering as a branch of traditional engineering often believe that SEs apply concepts from traditional engineering to software development. This means that software engineering students, like students in other engineering disciplines, should study the science and mathematics necessary to understand the systems they will be designing (in the case of SE, things like computer science and formal methods); practitioners should earn professional licenses; and so on. They believe engineering provides a structured, logical approach, and therefore, a stable final product.

Metaphor

Others are inspired by traditional engineering, but believe that software needs its own solutions. They believe that many traditional engineering concepts cannot apply, because software is fundamentally different from other kinds of products. They believe that students should study computer science and other useful topics, and that practitioners do not necessarily need licenses.

Meanings of terms

Prior to the mid-1990s, most software practitioners called themselves programmers or developers, regardless of their actual jobs. Many people prefer to call themselves software developer and programmer, because most widely agree what these terms mean, while software engineer is still being debated.

The term programmer has often been used as a pejorative term to refer to those who lacked the tools, skills, education, or ethics to write quality software. In response, many practitioners called themselves software engineers to escape the stigma attached to the word programmer. In many companies, the titles programmer and software developer were changed to software engineer, for many categories of programmers.

These terms cause confusion, because some denied any differences (arguing that everyone does essentially the same thing with software) while others use the terms to create a difference (because the terms mean completely different jobs).

Fighting over priorities

In the pursuit of better software, the community disagrees on priorities, approaches, and on what an individual should do in specific circumstances. Everyone seems to advocate a different combination of the following issues. Proponents and methodologists advocate conflicting solutions and often heatedly debate their merits. All subfields mix the following priorities to varying degrees.

Management

Some advocate that software engineering is primarily about the management practices necessary to make reliable budgets and schedules. People at the Software Engineering Institute took this approach and created the CMM.

Formal methods

Some advocate applying rigorous mathematical analysis to computer programming, especially proofs of correctness. They believe that traditional engineering is carried out with mathematical rigor, while programming is an iterative, trial-and-error process. These advocates strive to make programming more rigorous.

Process

Some advocate that software engineers must follow step-by-step processes, much like assembly line workers. This inspired CMM, SPICE, and other methods and processes.

Tools

Some advocate that software engineering means tools, especially CASE tools (like Unix tools and IDEs) that emphasize high-level architecture issues. Today's CASE tools emphasize UML.

Ethics

Some advocate that software engineering has strong ethical obligations and aspects of and social responsibility.

Licenses

Some advocate defining software engineering in terms of professional licenses, like some traditional engineers have. The biggest advocates of this position are from Texas and Canada, where government sponsors licenses for SEs.

Degrees

Some advocate defining SE by college degrees. Most professions have college degrees tailored to the needs of practitioners. Many graduate software engineering degrees are available and undergraduate degrees are becoming available.

Attributes

Cost, Time, Quality: Different kinds of applications are sensitive to different attributes. Consumer applications are sensitive to cost. Military and medical applications are sensitive to quality. Business web applications are most sensitive to time. Some researchers argue that one attribute or another (usually quality) matters more than the others. But, software engineers work on all kinds of applications.

Psychology

The role of psychology and variation of psychology between individuals. Are the "best" software organization solutions to be found via formal math-like proofs (such as "formal methods" above), or by matching the developer's psychology to the software design regardless of mathematical purity?

(source:wikipedia)

Controversies over the term Engineer

Controversies over the term 'engineer' stem from the traditional uses in design and analysis, as compared to newer uses of the term. Several nations are currently dealing with the definition of the term in both the legal arena and between professional bodies.

Canada

In Canada, it is considered illegal to practice engineering, or use the title "Engineer", without a Professional engineers license P.Eng. The use of the term "engineer" has been an ongoing issue between professional bodies, the IT industry and the security industry, where companies or associations may issue certifications or titles with the word "engineer" as part of that title (such as Security engineer or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). Several licensing bodies for professional engineering contend that only licensed professional engineers are legally allowed to use the title "Engineer". The IT industry, on the other hand, counters that

These title holders never presented themselves as "Professional Engineers",

Provincial laws, other than in Quebec and Ontario, regulate only the use of term "Professional Engineer", and not any title with the word "Engineer" in it (In Quebec and Ontario, the term "Engineer" is protected by both the Engineers Act and by section 32 of the Professional Code), and

The IT industry has used the term "engineer" since the dawn of the computing industry in the 60s

Court rulings regarding the usage of the term "engineer" have been mixed. For example, after complaints from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, a court in Quebec fined Microsoft Canada $1,000 for misusing the "engineer" title by referring to MCSE graduates as "engineers". Conversely, an Alberta court dismissed the lawsuit filed by The Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) against Raymond Merhej for using the title "System Engineer", claiming that "The Respondent's situation is such that it cannot be contended that the public is likely to be deceived, confused or jeopardized by his use of the term…"APEGGA also lost the appeal to this decision.

The Canadian Information Processing Society and in particular CIPS Ontario have attempted to strike a balance between the professional engineering licensing bodies and the IT industry over the use of the term "engineer" in the software industry, but so far no major agreements or decisions have been announced.

Additional confusion has taken place over similarly named occupations. One such example would be Power Engineers or Stationary Engineers. Graduates of a 2 year (in Nova Scotia) college level Power Engineering Technology program may use the title Power Engineer or Stationary Engineer. This is conflicting with the title often used in the electrical industry for professional engineers designing related equipment. The incorporation of the word "engineer" in Power Engineer or Stationary Engineer can itself cause confusion.

United Kingdom

In general, there is no restriction on the right to practice as an engineer in the UK. There are a few fields of practice, generally safety related, which are reserved by statute to licensed persons. In the UK, the term "engineer" can be applied to non-degreed vocations such as technologists, technicians, draftsmen, machinists, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, repair people, and semi-skilled occupations.

The UK has Professional Engineering titles registered via the Engineering Council UK (ECUK): Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and Chartered Engineer (CEng). Incorporated Engineer is a first-cycle qualification for Bachelor of Engineering or Bachelor of Science degree holders(Sydney Accord, equivalent to Technologist). Chartered Engineer is a second-cycle qualification usually reserved for holders of integrated Master of Engineering degrees or Bachelor of Engineering/Bachelor of Science plus Master of Science degrees. Both IEng and CEng require substantial professional experience (4-8 years post graduate), a professional review and interview.

It is illegal in the UK to hold that one is a Chartered or Incorporated Engineer unless so registered with the ECUK. The title of "engineer" by itself is not regulated in the UK.

While ECUK is the primary body registering Engineers in UK, there are other professional societies that register engineers as well. Under its Royal Charter, the Engineering Council UK grants licences to engineering institutions allowing them to assess candidates for inclusion on its Register of Professional Engineers and Technicians, and to accredit academic programmes and professional development schemes. There are over 30 institutions licensed to register professional engineers with EC UK.

Europe and Latin America

Engineers in Europe Table showing all countries in which this profession is regulated, with the name of the profession as used in the country

In Germany and some other European and Latin American countries, the term Diploma Engineer implies that the person has completed typically one more year of academic work beyond the basic engineering Bachelor's degree. Diploma Engineer is therefore a university degree, and not a professional registration or license. However, in Germany and most other countries where the Diploma Engineer degree exist, there is no professional registration or license in engineering (with a very limited number of exceptions, e.g. civil engineering in Germany). This is the reason why graduates of these degrees are generally allowed to use the legally protected engineer title within these countries.

In France, the Ingénieur title is delivered by Grandes Ecoles. It corresponds to a Highly selective Master degree level, as three selections occurs: in high school, after two years of Classes preparatoires, and for the diploma delivering. This highly selective process, and French poor consideration for Ph.D owners (except in medical or veterinary domains), makes the Ingénieur title very reputated.

In Chile, the Ingeniero (engineer) title is regulated by law, which distinguishes at least three different kinds of professional engineering titles. First, the Ingeniería de Ejecución, which only requires a degree in applied science and a technical degree, from a university or a technical institute (usually four years of formation); Ingeniería, which requires a major degree in basic sciences plus a technical degree, both from a university (usually five years of formation); and Ingeniería Civil, which requires an academic major degree in basic sciences, a minor degree in applied sciences and a technical degree, all from a university (usually six or six and a half years). In all cases, the term refers to a professional degree conceded by an educational institution, yet it can only be given by certain institutions when all legal requirements are met.

In Brazil, the title of Engenheiro (engineer) and in Argentina the title of Ingeniero can only be legally used by someone with a five or six-year engineering degree. In Argentina most universities have a five or six-year engineering degree (Around 3500-4000 hours of classes or aprox 240-250 credits, one credit = 16 contact hours). Both countries conced the degree through universities (most common) and certain institutions (most rarely).

In Puerto Rico, use of the title Ingeniero (engineer) is restricted to those holding an engineer's license registered by the College of Engineers and Land Surveyors of Puerto Rico. These people have the right to add the letters "Ing." before their names on resumes, business cards, and other communication.

United States

In the United States, use of the title Professional Engineer is restricted to those holding a Professional Engineer's license. These people have the right to add the letters "P.E." after their names on resumes, business cards, and other communication. However, each state has its own licensing procedure, and the license is valid only in the state that granted it.

Other uses of the term "engineer" are legally controlled and protected to varying degrees, dependent on the state and the enforcement of its engineering certification board. The term is frequently applied to fields where practitioners may have no engineering background, or the work has no basis in the physical engineering disciplines; for example sanitation engineer. However, in many jurisdictions, the usage of this term is limited to internal use by a company, rather than in a professional or marketing aspect, if said company is not licensed to perform engineering work. This is because what is legally recognized as engineering work (and thus requiring licensure to be practiced) is held to strict criminal liability. 

With regard to the term software engineer, many states, such as Texas and Florida, have license requirements for such a title that are in line with the requirements for more traditional engineering fields. Jurisdictions such as these tend to refer to the position of network engineer as a technician. 

International professional bodies

The AACE, a professional body for Cost Engineers, explains why a technical engineering background is not required for their profession with the following statement:

“ The skills and knowledge required to deal with costs (e.g., cost estimating, planning and scheduling, etc.) are quite different from those required to deal with the physical design dimension. From that difference, the field of cost engineering was born. Cost engineering practitioners work alongside of and are peers with engineers, software analysts, play producers, architects, and other creative career fields to handle the cost dimension, but they do not necessarily have the same background. Whether they have technical, operations, finance and accounting, or other backgrounds, cost engineering practitioners need to share a common understanding, based on “scientific principles and techniques,” with the engineering or other creative career functions.

(source:wikipedia)

Software engineering

The Airbus A380 uses a substantial amount of software to create a "paperless" cockpit.

Software engineering (SE) is a profession dedicated to designing, implementing, and modifying software so that it is of higher quality, more affordable, maintainable, and faster to build. It is a "systematic approach to the analysis, design, assessment, implementation, test, maintenance and re-engineering of a software by applying engineering to the software".  The term software engineering first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference, and was meant to provoke thought regarding the perceived "software crisis" at the time. Since the field is still relatively young compared to its sister fields of engineering, there is still much debate around what software engineering actually is, and if it conforms to the classical definition of engineering. The IEEE Computer Society's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge defines "software engineering" as the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software.It is the application of Engineering to software because it integrates significant mathematics, computer science and practices whose origins are in Engineering.

Software development, a much used and more generic term, does not necessarily subsume the engineering paradigm. Although it is questionable what impact it has had on actual software development over the last more than 40 years, the field's future looks bright according to Money Magazine and Salary.com, who rated "software engineering" as the best job in the United States in 2006.

History

Main article: History of software engineering

When the first modern digital computers appeared in the early 1940s, the instructions to make them operate were wired into the machine. Practitioners quickly realized that this design was not flexible and came up with the "stored program architecture" or von Neumann architecture. Thus the first division between "hardware" and "software" began with abstraction being used to deal with the complexity of computing.

Programming languages started to appear in the 1950s and this was also another major step in abstraction. Major languages such as Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOL were released in the late 1950s to deal with scientific, algorithmic, and business problems respectively. E.W. Dijkstra wrote his seminal paper, "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", in 1968 and David Parnas introduced the key concept of modularity and information hiding in 1972 to help programmers deal with the ever increasing complexity of software systems. A software system for managing the hardware called an operating system was also introduced, most notably by Unix in 1969. In 1967, the Simula language introduced the object-oriented programming paradigm.

These advances in software were met with more advances in computer hardware. In the mid 1970s, the microcomputer was introduced, making it economical for hobbyists to obtain a computer and write software for it. This in turn led to the now famous Personal Computer (PC) and Microsoft Windows. The Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC was also starting to appear as a consensus for centralized construction of software in the mid 1980s. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the introduction of several new Simula-inspired object-oriented programming languages, including Smalltalk, Objective-C, and C++.

Open-source software started to appear in the early 90s in the form of Linux and other software introducing the "bazaar" or decentralized style of constructing software. Then the World Wide Web and the popularization of the Internet hit in the mid 90s, changing the engineering of software once again. Distributed systems gained sway as a way to design systems, and the Java programming language was introduced with its own virtual machine as another step in abstraction. Programmers collaborated and wrote the Agile Manifesto, which favored more lightweight processes to create cheaper and more timely software.

The current definition of software engineering is still being debated by practitioners today as they struggle to come up with ways to produce software that is "cheaper, better, faster". Cost reduction has been a primary focus of the IT industry since the 1990s. Total cost of ownership represents the costs of more than just acquisition. It includes things like productivity impediments, upkeep efforts, and resources needed to support infrastructure.

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, Ontario, and Quebec, software engineers can hold the Professional Engineer (P.Eng)designation and/or the Information Systems Professional (I.S.P.) designation; however, there is no legal requirement to have these qualifications. In Israel a person with an appropriate engineering degree has the right to be listed in Israel's Registry of Engineers and Architects, and Israeli engineering law says that a person calling themselves an engineer without the proper license / registration could be sentenced to up to 6 months in jail.

The IEEE Computer Society and the ACM, the two main 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 IEEE also promulgates a "Software Engineering Code of Ethics".

Employment

In 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.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.

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).

Certification

The Software Engineering Institute offers certification on specific topics like Security, Process improvement and Software architecture. 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. 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). In 2008 they added an entry-level certification known as the Certified Software Development Associate (CSDA). 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). In Canada the Canadian Information Processing Society has developed a legally recognized professional certification called Information Systems Professional (ISP). The ACM had a professional certification program in the early 1980s, 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.

Impact of globalization

The initial impact of outsourcing, and the relatively lower cost of international human resources in developing third world countries led to the dot com bubble burst of the 1990s. 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. Although statistics do not currently show a threat to software engineering itself; a related career, computer programming does appear to have been affected. Nevertheless, the ability to smartly leverage offshore and near-shore resources in an efficient fashion has improved the overall operational capability of many organizations. When Europeans 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 key human resource sleep patterns.

Education

A knowledge of programming is a pre-requisite to becoming a software engineer. In 2004 the IEEE Computer Society produced the SWEBOK, which has been published as ISO/IEC Technical Report 19759:2004, describing the body of knowledge that they believe should be mastered by a graduate software engineer with four years of experience. 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. A number of universities have Software Engineering degree programs; as of 2010, there were 244 Campus programs, 70 Online programs, 230 Masters-level programs, 41 Doctorate-level programs, and 69 Certificate-level programs in the United States.

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.

Sub-disciplines

Software engineering can be divided into ten subdisciplines. They are:

Software requirements: The elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation of requirements for software.

Software design: The design of software is usually done with Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools and use standards for the format, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Software development: The construction of software through the use of programming languages.

Software testing

Software maintenance: Software systems often have problems and need enhancements for a long time after they are first completed. This subfield deals with those problems.

Software configuration management: Since software systems are very complex, their configuration (such as versioning and source control) have to be managed in a standardized and structured method.

Software engineering management: The management of software systems borrows heavily from project management, but there are nuances encountered in software not seen in other management disciplines.

Software development process: The process of building software is hotly debated among practitioners; some of the better-known processes are the Waterfall Model, the Spiral Model, Iterative and Incremental Development, and Agile Development.

Software engineering tools, see Computer Aided Software Engineering

Software quality

Related disciplines

Software engineering is related to the disciplines of computer science, management science, and systems engineering.

Computer science

Software engineering is considered an area of computer science by some academics. Many of the foundations of software engineering come from computer science.

Project management

The building of a software system is usually considered a project and the management of it borrows many principles from the field of Project management.

Systems engineering

Systems engineers have been dealing with the complexity of large systems for many decades and their knowledge is applied to many software engineering problems.

(source:wikipedia)