IEEE Software

A process-oriented perspective on large student projects guides students in integrating end-to-end life-cycle skills and provides consistency of experience among projects. After conducting 49 Capstone projects, the authors learned that they must cultivate a process culture, that agile processes provide a bridge from ad hoc programming assignments to organized project work, and that process requires a suitable infrastructure of tools and process expertise.

Lockheed Martin's C-130J Avionics/Software Integrated Product Team (IPT) creates software that runs a wide variety of systems on the C-130J aircraft. This team develops embedded safety-critical real-time air vehicle software and a ground-based data analysis system for aircraft analysis. The IPT operates within the infrastructure of the C-130J Software Factory, which consists of Sun workstations and PCs networked to Web servers, a configuration management server, an aircraft simulator implemented in software, and laboratories are composed of the aircraft's hardware mounted in equipment racks for easy access. The article discusses the IPT's diverse education and training needs, focusing on how to address shortfalls in conventional computer science and engineering education that result in mismatched expectations between the new hire and the company.

Software construction is the ultimate embodiment of the software development process. The art of programming lies in that nether region between the hopeful wishes of an elegant architecture and the hard grindstone of technical details. To prevent major catastrophic loss, we must focus on preventing the triggering mechanism from occurring. If we can fix the little problems as they occur, then we shall have fewer large problems with which to contend.

The author asserts that we can save a great deal of time and money if testers are involved in testing requirements. If the requirements have some consistent quality criteria, testers can raise questions and find problems before we turn them into code. A strong link between testing and requirements engineering can benefit both sides, but often this link is missing. The author examines the seven most common myths or misconceptions behind this missing link.

New software engineering programs are popular but controversial, and they have been the subject of much hype. The article addresses the academic considerations involved in developing software engineering programs, describing seven common myths about software engineering and shedding light on the tradeoffs and decisions required.

For the software engineer charged with maintaining an object-oriented system hiding numerous bugs under layers of inheritance, probably not. However, for a merchant whose Java-enabled Web site has led to greatly increased sales and revenue, it certainly has. So context must be considered, but the discussion must continue.

The theory that most current students get covers may be 15 percent of the activities they encounter in practice. Most of it is based on a model of software engineering as a set-piece job of deriving and verifying code from a static set of requirements. This was a good model in the 1970s, but it is way out of date now. We should try to educate them for the software engineering situations they will encounter in the future.

Academia and industry disagree about what students should learn in school versus on the job. When the University of Alabama at Birmingham developed a graduate program in electrical and computer engineering, they consulted industry executives to develop a curriculum that addresses industry's needs without compromising academic fundamentals.

Regulatory authorities in the US and Europe have received two documents crucial to aviation software developers. The first one, DO-248B, clarifies existing software guidelines for airborne systems and equipment certification, and the other, CNS/ATM (a counterpart to DO-178B) provides new guidance for non-airborne communication and navigation systems.