Software Engineering Body of Knowledge Version 1.0, A

This SWE-BOK can be used for a variety of purposes: it can help to solve problems and address issues in industrial, academic, and professional settings. Most importantly, it can serve as a general model for understanding and describing the software engineering profession.

3.1 Industrial Use

Although software engineering has become a major industrial and commercial activity in the last 20 years, the nature and content of software engineering is still unclear in many of the organizations involved in software development and acquisition. This SWE-BOK can help such organizations to examine, categorize, and organize their software activities and can lead to better definitions of software roles and software processes.

Software organizations that want to assess the knowledge of their engineers could use this SWE-BOK in designing a competency evaluation system. Such a competency system could use this SWE-BOK to help identify and judge what kind of software engineering knowledge is required to accomplish the tasks associated with individual software-related roles. Such an assessment might be coupled with the use of this SWE-BOK to design training programs and to develop an overall effort to improve an organization's software processes.

3.2 Academic Use

If the practice of software engineering is to advance, it is critical that the initial preparation for software engineers be improved. Currently, most entry-level software engineers receive their initial preparation in academic computing programs (computer science, computer engineering, and information systems) or in non-computing engineering programs, such as electrical engineering. There are an increasing number of academic institutions that are interested in developing software engineering degree programs. In some cases, the programs will be created as entirely new programs, but in most cases, they will represent the conversion of an existing program in computing to one that emphasizes software engineering. Unfortunately, many computing faculty members have little preparation or experience in software engineering. This SWE-BOK can provide faculty with basic information about software engineering knowledge, and this will support the development of education curricula in software engineering.

In addition, this SWE-BOK supports the development of more general guidelines for the development and accreditation of software engineering programs by groups such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB). This SWE-BOK can also serve as a framework that can be used to conduct research into software engineering methods, techniques, and practices. Research organizations could use this SWE-BOK to help organize, classify, and guide inquiry into software engineering. Finally, this SWE-BOK can also be used as a framework for designing software engineering curricula.

3.3 Professional Use

This SWE-BOK provides the means for studying and addressing a number of issues related to the software engineering profession. First, a body of knowledge could be used to define the profession itself or, at least, to delineate the knowledge associated with the profession. Such a definition is essential to the maturation of a discipline and is a necessary step in determining the professional standards and procedures required for the effective practice of software engineering. The definition and the professional standards could then be used to develop criteria and assessment instruments for the certification and licensing of software engineers. In addition, this SWE-BOK could be used by individual engineers to assess their own knowledge about the software engineering profession and to provide a framework that they can use to plan their professional development.