Software Engineering Principles: Do They Meet Engineering Criteria?

Kenza Meridji, Alain Abran

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DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2010.310114                

Abstract

As a discipline, software engineering is not as mature as other engineering disciplines, and it still lacks consensus on a well-recognized set of fundamental principles. A 2006 analysis surveyed and analyzed 308 separate proposals for principles of software engineering, of which only thirty-four met the criteria to be recognized as such. This paper reports on a further analysis of these thirty-four candidate principles using two sets of engineering criteria derived from: A) the engineering categories of knowledge defined by Vincenti in his analysis of engineering foundations; and B) the joint IEEE and ACM software engineering curriculum. The outcome of this analysis is a proposed set of nine software engineering principles that conform to engineering criteria.

Keywords

Engineering Criteria, Software Engineering Principles, Vincenti, Engineering Verification Criteria

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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