Abstract
This chapter presents a short history of software engineering from its birth at the Garmisch conference in Germany. The IEEE definition of software engineering is discussed, and it is emphasized that software engineering is a lot more than just programming. We discuss the key challenges in software engineering, as well a number of the high-profile software failures. The waterfall and spiral life cycles are discussed, as well a brief discussion on the Rational Unified Process and the popular Agile methodology. We discuss the key activities in the waterfall model such as requirements, design, implementation, unit, system and acceptance testing.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
These are IT projects covering diverse sectors including banking, telecommunications, etc., rather than pure software companies. Software companies following maturity frameworks such as the CMMI generally achieve more consistent project results, and the CMMI focuses on the management side of software engineering.
- 2.
I recall projects at Motorola that regularly achieved 5.6σ quality in an L4 CMM environment (i.e. approx. 20 defects per million lines of code. This represents very high quality.).
- 3.
Approaches such as the CMM or SPICE (ISO 15504) focus mainly on the management and organizational practices required in software engineering. The emphasis is on defining software processes that are fit for purpose and to consistently follow them. The process maturity models focus on what needs to be done rather how it should be done. This gives the organization the freedom to choose the appropriate implementation to meet its needs. The models provide useful information on practices to consider in the implementation.
- 4.
Parnas has made important contributions to computer science. He advocates a solid engineering approach with the extensive use of classical mathematical techniques to software development. He also introduced information hiding in the 1970s, which is now a part of object-oriented development.
- 5.
Software companies that are following approaches such as the CMM or ISO 9001 consider the education and qualification of staff prior to assigning staff to performing specific tasks. The appropriate qualifications and experience for the specific role are considered prior to appointing a person to carry out the role. Many companies are committed to the education and continuous development of their staff and on introducing best practice in software engineering into their organization
- 6.
The ancient Babylonians used the concept of accountability, and they employed a code of laws (known as the Hammurabi Code) c. 1750 B.C. It included a law that stated that if a house collapsed and killed the owner, then the builder of the house would be executed.
- 7.
However, it is unlikely that an individual programmer would be subject to litigation in the case of a flaw in a program causing damage or loss of life. A comprehensive disclaimer of responsibility for problems rather than a guarantee of quality accompanies most software products. Software engineering is a team-based activity involving many engineers in various parts of the project, and it would be potentially difficult for an outside party to prove that the cause of a particular problem is due to the professional negligence of a particular software engineer, as there are many others involved in the process such as reviewers of documentation and code and the various test groups. Companies are more likely to be subject to litigation, as a company is legally responsible for the actions of their employees in the workplace, and a company is a wealthier entity than one of its employees. The legal aspects of licensing software may protect software companies from litigation. However, greater legal protection for the customer can be built into the contract between the supplier and the customer for bespoke-software development.
- 8.
Many software companies have a defined code of ethics that employees are expected to adhere. Larger companies will wish to project a good corporate image and to be respected worldwide.
- 9.
The British Computer Scientist (BCS) has introduced a qualification system for computer science professionals that it used to show that professionals are properly qualified. The most important of these is the BCS Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) which allows IT professionals to be qualified in service management, project management, software testing and so on.
- 10.
Software companies that are following the CMMI or ISO 9000 standards will employ audits to verify that the processes and procedures have been followed. Auditors report their findings to management and the findings are addressed appropriately by the project team and affected individuals.
- 11.
We treat the waterfall model as identical to the V model in this text.
- 12.
This is essential for serious defects that have caused significant inconvenience to customers (e.g. a major telecom outage). The software development organization will wish to learn lessons to determine what went wrong in its processes that prevented the defect from being identified during peer reviews and testing. Actions to prevent a reoccurrence will be identified and implemented.
- 13.
These are the risk management activities in the Prince 2 methodology.
References
Beck K (2000) Extreme programming explained embrace change. Addison Wesley, Reading
Barry B (1988) A spiral model for software development and enhancement. Computer 21:61–72
Fred B (1975) The mythical man month. Addison Wesley, Reading
Fred B (1986) No silver bullet. Essence and accidents of software engineering. In: Information processing. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Buxton JN, Naur P, Randell B (1975) Software engineering. Petrocelli. Report on two NATO Conferences held in Garmisch, Germany (October 1968) and Rome, Italy (October 1969)
Chrissis MB, Mike C, Sandy S (2011) CMMI. Guidelines for process integration and product improvement, 3rd edn, SEI series in software engineering. Addison Wesley, Upper Saddle River
Dijkstra EW (1972) Structured programming. Academic Press, London\New York
Fagan M (1976) Design and code inspections to reduce errors in software development. IBM Syst J 15(3):182–210
Gilb T, Graham D (1994) Software inspections. Addison Wesley, Reading
Jacobson I, Booch G, Rumbaugh J (1999) The unified software development process. Addison Wesley, Reading
Jacaobson I et al (2005) The unified modelling language, user guide, 2nd edn. Addison Wesley Professional, Upper Saddle River
Office of Government Commerce (2004) Managing successful projects with PRINCE2. The Stationery Office, London
O’Regan G (2006) Mathematical approaches to software quality. Springer, London
O’Regan G (2010) Introduction to software process improvement. Springer, London
O’Regan G (2014) Introduction to software quality. Springer, Cham
Parnas D (1972) On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Communications of the ACM 15(12)
Royce W (1970) The software lifecycle model (Waterfall Model). In Proc. WESTCON, August, 1970
Standard CMMI appraisal method for process improvement. CMU/SEI-2006-HB-002. V1.2. August 2006
Spivey JM (1992) The Z notation. A reference manual, Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science. Prentice Hall, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
O’Regan, G. (2016). History of Software Engineering. In: Introduction to the History of Computing. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33137-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33138-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)