Outline of software engineering

Software applications

Software engineers build software (applications, operating systems, system software) that people use.

Applications influence software engineering by pressuring developers to solve problems in new ways. For example, consumer software emphasizes low cost, medical software emphasizes high quality, and Internet commerce software emphasizes rapid development.

• Business software
  • Accounting software
• Analytics
  • Data mining closely related to database
  • Decision support systems
• Airline reservations
• Banking
  • Automated teller machines
  • Cheque processing
  • Credit cards
• Commerce
  • Trade
  • Auctions (e.g. eBay)
  • Reverse auctions (procurement)
  • Bar code scanners
• Compilers
  • Parsers
  • Compiler optimization
  • Interpreters
  • Linkers
  • Loaders
• Communication
  • E-mail
  • Instant messengers
  • VOIP
  • Calendars — scheduling and coordinating
  • Contact managers
• Computer graphics
  • Animation
  • Special effects for video and film
  • Editing
  • Post-processing
• Cryptography
• Databases, support almost every field
• Embedded systems Both software engineers and traditional engineers write software control systems for embedded products.
  • Automotive software
  • Avionics software
  • Heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) software
  • Medical device software
  • Telephony
  • Telemetry
• Engineering All traditional engineering branches use software extensively. Engineers use spreadsheets, more than they ever used calculators. Engineers use custom software tools to design, analyze, and simulate their own projects, like bridges and power lines. These projects resemble software in many respects, because the work exists as electronic documents and goes through analysis, design, implementation, and testing phases. Software tools for engineers use the tenets of computer science; as well as the tenets of calculus, physics, and chemistry.
  • Computer Aided Design (CAD)
  • Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Simulation
• File
  • FTP
  • File sharing
  • File synchronization
• Finance
  • Bond market
  • Futures market
  • Stock market
• Games
  • Poker
  • Multiuser Dungeons
  • Video games
• Information systems, support almost every field
  • LIS Management of laboratory data
  • MIS Management of financial and personnel data
• Logistics
  • Supply chain management
• Manufacturing
  • Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM)
  • Distributed Control Systems (DCS)
• Music
  • Music sequencers
  • Sound effects
  • Music synthesis
• Network Management
  • Network management system
  • Element Management System
  • Operations Support System
  • Business Support Systems
• Networks and Internet
  • Domain Name System
  • Protocols
  • Routers
• Office suites
  • Word processors
  • Spreadsheets
  • Presentations
• Operating systems
  • Embedded
  • Graphical
  • Multitasking
  • Real-time
• Robotics
• Signal processing, encoding and interpreting signals
  • Image processing, encoding and interpreting visual information
  • Speech processing
  • Text recognition
  • Handwriting recognition
• Simulation, supports almost every field.
  • Engineering, A software simulation can be cheaper to build and more flexible to change than a physical engineering model.
  • Sciences
• Sciences
  • Genomics
• Traffic Control
  • Air traffic control
  • Ship traffic control
  • Road traffic control
• Training
  • Drill
  • Simulation
  • Testing
• Visualization, supports almost every field
  • Architecture
  • Engineering
  • Sciences
• Voting
• World wide web
  • Browsers
  • Servers

Software engineering topics

Many technologies and practices are (mostly) confined to software engineering, though many of these are shared with computer science.

Computer science topics

Skilled software engineers know a lot of computer science including what is possible and impossible, and what is easy and hard for software.

• Algorithms, well-defined methods for solving specific problems.
  • Searching
  • Sorting
  • Parsing
  • Numerical analysis
• Compiler theory
  • Yacc/Bison
• Data structures, well-defined methods for storing and retrieving data.
  • Lists
  • Trees
  • Hash tables
• Computability, some problems cannot be solved at all
  • List of unsolved problems in computer science
  • Halting problem
• Complexity, some problems are solvable in principle, yet unsolvable in practice
  • NP completeness
  • Computational complexity theory
• Formal methods
  • Proof of correctness
  • Program synthesis
• Adaptive Systems
  • Neural Networks
  • Evolutionary Algorithms

Mathematics topics

Discrete mathematics is a key foundation of software engineering.

• Number representation
• Set (computer science)
• Bags
• Graphs
  • Sequences
  • Trees
  • Graph (data structure)
• Logic
  • Deduction
  • First-order logic
  • Higher-order logic
  • Combinatory logic
• Induction
• Combinatorics

Other

• Domain knowledge
• Statistics
• Decision theory
• Type theory

Life cycle phases

• Development life cycle phase
  • Requirements gathering / analysis
  • Software architecture
  • Computer programming
  • Testing, detects bugs
    • Black box testing
    • White box testing
  • Quality assurance, ensures compliance with process.
• Product Life cycle phase and Project lifecycle
  • Inception
  • First development
  • Major release
  • Minor release
  • Bug fix release
  • Maintenance
  • Obsolescence
• Release development stage, near the end of a release cycle
  • Alpha
  • Beta
  • Gold master
  • 1.0; 2.0
• Software development lifecycle
  • Waterfall model — Structured programming and Stepwise refinement
  • SSADM
  • Spiral model — Iterative development
  • V-model
  • Agile software development
  • DSDM
  • Chaos model — Chaos strategy

Deliverables

Deliverables must be developed for many SE projects. Software engineers rarely make all of these deliverables themselves. They usually cooperate with the writers, trainers, installers, marketers, technical support people, and others who make many of these deliverables.

• Application software — the software
• Database — schemas and data.
• Documentation, online and/or print, FAQ, Readme, release notes, Help, for each role
  • User
  • Administrator
  • Manager
  • Buyer
• Administration and Maintenance policy, what should be backed-up, checked, configured, ...
• Installers
• Migration
  • Upgrade from previous installations
  • Upgrade from competitor's installations
• Training materials, for each role
  • User
  • Administrator
  • Manager
  • Buyer
• Support info for computer support groups.
• Marketing and sales materials
  • White papers, explain the technologies used in the applications

Business roles

• Operations
  • Users
  • Administrators
  • Managers
  • Buyers
• Development
  • Analysts
  • Programmers
  • Testers
  • Managers
• Business
  • Consulting — customization and installation of applications
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Legal — contracts, intellectual property rights
  • Privacy and Privacy engineering
  • Support — helping customers use applications
  • Personnel — hiring and training qualified personnel
  • Finance — funding new development
• Academe
  • Educators
  • Researchers

Management topics

• Leadership
  • Coaching
  • Communication
  • Listening
  • Motivation
  • Vision, SEs are good at this
  • Example, everyone follows a good example best
• Human resource management
  • Hiring, getting people into an organization
  • Training
  • Evaluation
• Project management
  • Goal setting
  • Customer interaction (Rethink)
  • Estimation
  • Risk management
  • Change management
• Process management
  • Software development processes
  • Metrics

Business topics

• Quality programs
  • Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
  • Six Sigma
  • Total Quality Management (TQM)

Pioneers

Many people made important contributions to SE technologies, practices, or applications.

• John Backus: Fortran, first optimizing compiler, BNF
• Vic Basili: Experience factory.
• F.L. Bauer: Stack principle, popularized the term Software Engineering
• Kent Beck: Refactoring, extreme programming, pair programming, test-driven development.
• Tim Berners-Lee: World wide web
• Barry Boehm: SE economics, COCOMO, Spiral model.
• Grady Booch: Object-oriented design, UML.
• Fred Brooks: Managed System 360 and OS 360. Wrote The Mythical Man-Month and No Silver Bullet.
• Larry Constantine: Structured design, coupling, cohesion
• Edsger Dijkstra: Wrote Notes on Structured Programming, A Discipline of Programming and Go To Statement Considered Harmful, algorithms, formal methods, pedagogy.
• Michael Fagan: Software inspection.
• Tom Gilb: Software metrics, Software inspection, Evolutionary Delivery ("Evo").
• Adele Goldstine: Wrote the Operators Manual for the ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer, and trained some of the first human computers
• Lois Haibt: FORTRAN, wrote the first parser
• Margaret Hamilton: Coined the term "software engineering", developed Universal Systems Language
• Mary Jean Harrold: Regression testing, fault localization
• Grace Hopper: The first compiler (Mark 1), COBOL, Nanoseconds.
• Watts Humphrey: Capability Maturity Model, Personal Software Process, fellow of the Software Engineering Institute.
• Jean Ichbiah: Ada
• Michael A. Jackson: Jackson Structured Programming, Jackson System Development
• Bill Joy: Berkeley Unix, vi, Java.
• Alan Kay: Smalltalk
• Brian Kernighan: C and Unix.
• Donald Knuth: Wrote The Art of Computer Programming, TeX, algorithms, literate programming
• Nancy Leveson: System safety
• Bertrand Meyer: Design by Contract, Eiffel programming language.
• Peter G. Neumann: RISKS Digest, ACM Sigsoft.
• David Parnas: Module design, social responsibility, professionalism.
• David Pearson, Computer Scientist: Developed the ICL CADES software engineering system.
• Jef Raskin: Developed the original Macintosh GUI, authored The Humane Interface
• Dennis Ritchie: C and Unix.
• Winston W. Royce: Waterfall model.
• Mary Shaw: Software architecture.
• Richard Stallman: Founder of the Free Software Foundation
• Linus Torvalds: Linux kernel, free software / open source development.
• Will Tracz: Reuse, ACM Software Engineering Notes.
• Gerald Weinberg: Wrote The Psychology of Computer Programming.
• Elaine Weyuker: Software testing
• Jeannette Wing: Formal specifications.
• Ed Yourdon: Structured programming, wrote The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer.

See also

• List of programmers
• List of computer scientists