CSIS 360 – Lecture 1
How old is “software engineering”? The term was first used in 1968 as the title of a very
influential NATO conference held in Germany, in response to the “software crisis”.
What is SWE?
A) “the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to obtain
economically software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines”
- Fritz Bauer, NATO Conference Proceedings
B) “(1) The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the
development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is, the application of
engineering to software.
(2) The study of approaches in (1)”
- IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, IEEE Standard
610.12-1990
Question: What do you need to do to develop software?
Lead discussion towards waterfall process, draw model
Definition of software lifecycle, lifecycle model (LOOK UP)
Show other activities that go on in parallel: project management, scheduling, cost
estimation, resource and personnel allocation, risk management
Point out that the majority of these activities are human-oriented as opposed to
technically-oriented.
Benefits of Waterfall:
oEasy to understand
oDoesn’t require lots of planning
Drawbacks:
oInflexible – difficult to respond to changing requirements. On long
projects this can be a serious problem. Customers don’t always know
exactly what they want.
oDon’t find problems until late in the process, when they are harder to fix.
What if you forgot something?
oCustomer must be patient – may be a long time before they get working
software
Software process model (lifecycle model)
Software process – note distinction between process and process model (similar to
distinction between a class and an object).
“A process defines who is doing what, when, and how to reach a certain goal” –
Jacobson, Booch, Rumbaugh
Show course web site – First assignment
