Thoughts on software engineering knowledge, and how to organize it

SWEBOK describes what knowledge a software engineer who has a Bachelor's degree and four years of experience should have. SEEK describes the knowledge to be taught in an undergraduate program in software engineering. Although different in scope and purpose, there are many similarities between the two, and after all, even experienced developers need an education, don't they? A full-day workshop on the alignment between SWEBOK and SEEK, held at STEP 2002, revealed a number of issues that received either a scant or a scattered treatment in either or both documents. These issues include: software architecture, software measurement, and software quality. In addition, topics of debate were whether or not user interface design should be considered part of software design, or rather deserves its own, separate treatment; and whether maintenance/evolution merits a separate discussion, or should rather be seen as the default mode of operation in software development. This paper elaborates the discussions of this workshop.