Software Engineering

  The systematic application of terminology, methods and tools to achieve defined technical goals for a software-intensive system. The acceptance of software engineering principles is highly relevant to the creation of large programs in a team, in particular if these programs

• - are to be run under different computer systems,
• - have a long lifetime, and
• - need to be adapted to changing problems.

In software engineering, the programming process is divided into phases which together are called the life cycle of the program. They are:

• - requirements analysis and specification
• - architectural design,
• - detailed design
• - implementation (coding)
• - unit (module) testing
• - system testing (integration)
• - operation and maintenance (evolution).

For each phase, methodologies have been used and described; where a customer-producer relation exists (viz. the users are not part of the same organization as the software suppliers), software standards have been defined ([Mazza94], [Fairclough96]). Despite a tradition that started in the 1970s, the field is still in rapid development, and few methods have been widely accepted. For further reading, browse the Internet, or see [Freeman76], [Wasserman80], [Lehmann80], [Booch87], [McDermid91], [Checkland92], [Marciniak94], [Humphrey95].