Essentials of a SE program

There are two main sources for the essential elements of a software engineering specialization focusing on enterprise application development. First, there are the fundamental software engineering topics. The IEEE Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK)³ provides a thorough summary of these fundamentals organized into 12 chapters, with an extensive bibliography of relevant resources for each subject area:

1. Introduction
2. Software Requirements
3. Software Design
4. Software Construction
5. Software Testing
6. Software Maintenance
7. Software Configuration Management
8. Software Engineering Management
9. Software Engineering Process
10. Software Engineering Tools and Methods
11. Software Quality
12. Knowledge Areas of Related Disciplines

Second, there are the specific topics and technologies that are in demand from industry, which we can group into three areas:

1. Web Technologies
   • J2EE, Enterprise JavaBeans, .NET
   • AJAX
   • XML
   • Web services (XML-RPC, SOAP)
   • Distributed systems architecture
   • Database-backed web applications

2. Software Architecture and Design
   • UML
   • Object-oriented analysis and design
   • Design based on reusable components
   • Service-based design
   • Model-driven design
   • Enterprise system architecture
   • Business process modeling
   • Architectures for heterogeneous systems integration

3. Software Development and Testing
   • Aspect-oriented programming
   • Agile and distributed development processes
   • Test-driven development
   • Service-based development
   • Model-based development
   • Implementation of heterogeneous systems integration
   • Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
   • Verification and Validation

The majority of these topics are not offered in current CSIM courses, so to offer a serious software engineering specialization we plan to update current offerings in CSIM and design new courses to fill the gaps. As a first step, we propose to pull the existing Information Systems Development (ISD) and Web Technologies courses into the MSCS/SE curriculum and revise them to reflect the needs of enterprise software development. As a second step, the topics and technology not currently mapping to any course are planned to be offered through new courses. We have the capacity to introduce two new courses into the program this year, based around the Architecture and Design and Development and Testing groupings.

Table 1: Topics from the SW Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK), and where these topics could be taught within the proposed MSCS/SE curriculum.

SWEBOK Chapter	ISD	SE1: SW Architecture Design	SE2: SW Development and Quality Improvement
2. SW Requirements	fundamentals, process, elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, practical considerations
3. SW Design		fundamentals, architecture, patterns, notations, methods	quality analysis and evaluation
4. SW Construction		fundamentals, models, reuse	verification, standards, planning, quality
5. SW Testing			fundamentals, techniques
6. SW Maintenance	fundamentals, management		process, CMMI, reengineering, reverse engineering
7. SW Configuration Management	management, identification, control		monitoring, auditing, release management
8. SE Management	initiation, planning, enactment		review and evaluation, closure, product measurement
9. SE Process	process implementation and change		process assessment, process measurement
10.1 SE Tools	requirement modeling, management, process	design, construction	testing, maintenance, quality
10.2 SE Methods		heuristic methods	prototyping
11. SW Quality	fundamentals, management		quality assurance, verification and validation, reviews and audits

Table 1 shows how the SWEBOK topics are planned to be distributed between the existing ISD course and these two new courses. This is the most obvious breakdown, but it is not perfect: the course structure will certainly evolve as the program matures in response both to the classroom situation and external demands.