Software engineering education often lacks standardization, with many institutions focusing on implementation rather than design as it impacts product architecture. Many graduates join the workforce with incomplete skills, leading to software projects that either fail outright or run woefully over budget and behind schedule.
Additionally, software engineers need to understand system engineering and architecture—the hardware and peripherals their programs will run on. This issue will only grow in importance as more programs leverage parallel computing, requiring an understanding of the parallel capabilities of processors and hardware. This book gives both software developers and system engineers key insights into how their skillsets support and complement each other. With a focus on these key knowledge areas, Software Engineering offers a set of best practices that can be applied to any industry or domain involved in developing software products.
Richard F. Schmidt has over 30 years of experience in systems and S/W engineering in the aerospace community. While serving the Air Force Systems Command, he chaired a Joint Service Working Group which produced Revision A of DoD-STD- 2167, Defense Systems S/W Development, and DOD-STD-2168, Defense Systems S/W Quality Program. Richard continued his involvement in standards by chairing the IEEE Working Group on Systems Engineering Management, responsible for the publication of IEEE 1220, The Application and Management of the Systems Engineering Process. Supported the Navy’s RDA Chief Systems Engineer (CHENG) Office for 9 years as an independent consultant for Systems and Software Engineering policy and practices, producing the Naval System-of-Systems (SoS) Systems Engineering Guidebook in 2005. Richard is currently the Director of Marketing for Vitech Corporation, the providers of CORE. Richard has also worked for CASE Tool vendors including Rational S/W, and Ascent Logic Corporation.