TABLE OF CONTENTS Software can be considered a product of engineering just like an automobile, telephone, television, aircraft, or any item that requires a high skill level to transform a given raw material into a useful item. Although some people suggest that the term software engineering was coined in 1965 [1], it first came into common currency in 1967 when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Science Committee called for an international meeting on the topic [2, 3].
Today billions of dollars are spent on software annually. For example, in the early 1990s the U.S. Department of Defense alone spent approximately $30 billion annually on software [4], and the size of computer programs has increased from around 100 lines in the early 1950s to multimillion lines in the late 1990s [5, 6]. Factors such as these have played an instrumental role in highlighting the importance of software engineering management. In fact, several U.S. government studies emphasized the importance of software engineering management during the 1980s and early 1990s [7 9].
Software engineering management may simply be described as a system of procedures, technologies, knowledge, and practices that provides the planning, organizing, directing, controlling, and staffing essential to effectively manage software engineering [10]. Software engineering in this case means the practical application of computer science, management, and other sciences for the purpose of analyzing, designing, constructing, and maintaining software and its related documentation.
This chapter presents important aspects of software engineering management.
The following facts and figures are...
