Forum for Advancing Software engineering Education (FASE) Volume 11 Number 12 (Issue 143) - December 15, 2001 *** 10th Anniversary Issue *** Note: If you have problems with the format of this document, try ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Table of Contents From the FASE Staff Thank You! This Issue This Issue's Topic: FASE 10th Anniversary Round-Table Discussion Academic Software Engineering: Before and After News Items ACM Ubiquity Article on SE Provokes Strong Response IEEE Computer Reports ABA Takes Active Opposition to UCITA Calls for Participation IEEE Software Special Issue - Software Engineering Education: A Focus on Practice 14th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering Contact and General Information about FASE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From the FASE Staff ###################################################################### Thank You! Since FASE (then called Forum for Academic Software Engineering) was launched in December 1991, its readership has been at the center of this publication, serving as guest editors, writing articles, submitting news items and announcements, providing invaluable feedback, and most important of all, giving us the support that we have needed in order to make this the world's best publication in the areas of software engineering education, training and professional issues. To each of you - our deepest thanks! ###################################################################### This Issue In deciding on a theme for this anniversary issue, we didn't want to repeat recent looks into the past. In May 1998, a history of FASE was published on the occasion of its 100th issue, and the December 1999 issue looked at some of the most important contributions to the software engineering education, training, and professional issues in the 20th century, so readers who would like a more detailed historical perspective can take a look at those articles. For this issue, we wanted to do both something new but at the same time harkened back to FASE's roots as a publication on academic software engineering. So, the first time, FASE is publishing the results of a roundtable discussion. Tom Hilburn has done his usual excellent job in putting together "Academic Software Engineering: Before and After", which looks at both the past 10 and the next 10 years on the subject. As always, we welcome and encourage your comments! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From: Tom Hilburn, Academic Editor This Issue's Topic FASE 10th Anniversary Round-Table Discussion Academic Software Engineering: Before and After On November 30th a round table discussion was held concerning the 10th anniversary of FASE. We assembled a group of distinguished software engineering educators and professionals who not only have knowledge of and experience with software engineering, but who have a long-term interest and involvement with the FASE community. The participants were Don Bagert, Hiedi Ellis, Dennis Frailey, Ana Moreno and Nancy Mead. Tom Hilburn was the moderator. A short bio of each participant appears below. We held the discussion via a teleconference meeting, with Ana participating before and after through an email discussion. The round table centered on what has happened in software engineering for the last ten years and what we can look forward to in the future. The meeting lasted for about two hours, so for the purpose of this article we have edited it to an appropriate length. A full transcript will be available at the FASE web site (http://www.cs.ttu.edu/fase/) within about a week of this publication date. Moderator: (Tom) - Tom Hilburn, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Participants: (Don) - Donald J. Bagert, Ph.D., Texas Tech University Don is a Professor of Computer Science at Texas Tech. His areas of research include software engineering methodologies and process improvement. Don is the co-director of the Software Engineering Research, Training and Education Center (SERTEC) and is the first Professional Engineer licensed in software engineering in both the State of Texas and the United States. He is also the managing editor of FASE. (Heidi) - Heidi J. C. Ellis, Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Hartford Heidi is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer at Hartford. Her research interests include the Semantic Web, and object-oriented software development and software engineering. Heidi has lead the efforts of the WGSEET (Working Group on Software Engineering Education and Training) in Industry- University Collaboration. (Dennis) - Dennis J. Frailey, Ph.D., Raytheon Company Dennis is a Principal Fellow at Raytheon Company in Dallas, Texas and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at SMU. At Raytheon, Dennis is a leader in software engineering improvement, currently focusing on software metrics and cycle time reduction. He is a ACM Distinguished Speaker and has been very active in leading efforts to improve software engineering education in the U.S. (Ana) - Ana M. Moreno, Ph.D., in Computer Science, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain. Ana is an Associate Professor of Computer Science. Her research interests include object-oriented conceptual modeling, requirements engineering, empirical software engineering, and software engineering and knowledge engineering. She has been active in encouraging and leading efforts to improve software engineering education in Europe. (Nancy) - Nancy R. Mead, Ph.D., Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Nancy Mead is a senior member of the technical staff in the NSS (Networked Systems Survivability) Program of the SEI. She is currently team leader for Survivable Network Analysis and is involved in the development of professional infrastructure for software engineers. Nancy was the head of the Education Program at the SEI, formed the WGSEET and was its chair for many years, and serves on the editorial board of FASE. THE DISCUSSION *********************************************************** (Tom) There have been many changes in software engineering in the last ten years. Which parts of a software engineering have been the most volatile? Which have been most stable? What are the most significant changes? Which changes have or will have the greatest impact on preparing (both by academia and industry) software engineers for the workplace? (Don) I am not sure volatile is the right term to use. There have been a lot of changes in technology, but I don't believe they have had a significant effect on the SE - the fundamental principles have remained the same. There has been a lot of interest in "process-based engineering". There is more interest in this area, because the process models that were developed ten years ago have crystallized and become accepted as part of SE (CMM(R), etc.) Things that are having the biggest impact are ancillary to SE. In North America, recent interest in licensing is influencing training, because licensing means engineers will be educated under accreditation guidelines that will trend toward more traditional engineering. There has been a lot of discussion about whether this is a good thing or not. We are also, seeing a trend toward standardization (ISO, SPICE, SWEBOK, etc.) we are seeing more development of standards for the whole milieu of SE. (Heidi) When I look at what we were doing ten years ago, I see the same core fundamental principles like requirements engineering and specification that are still present, still useful and still employed. But ten years ago, process was not fully addressed - so taking that forward, the biggest impact on SE is the rate of change itself and the need for SEs to adapt. Industry representatives (like Sikorsky) tell me that the technology that they are using was state-of-the-art 4-5 years ago, but they need to rapidly update it, while keeping the rigor and the robustness of their processes. This means, in addition to educating engineers in techniques and process approaches, we need to provide them with certain non-technical "fuzzy" skills like adaptability - allowing them to update the techniques they learn in one technology area to a newer version, and to use them in new and different ways - sort of a "freedom of thinking" mode. (Dennis) I concur with Don's and Heidi's comments about process-based engineering being something that really blossomed in the last decade. This is also the decade in which OO techniques became real. Rather than sort of oddities, they became widely used in the workplace. This is also the decade where there has been a sudden spurt in academic interest in SE. But, the most significant and important development is that now software engineering is "on the map". It is becoming clear that SE is not the same as CS - ten years ago SE was viewed as a tiny branch of CS. Now SE is accepted on its own - maybe CS is a tiny part of SE. Programs that use to have a single course in SE now have a dozen. We see a lot more SE books, the SWEBOK has been developed, and licensing efforts are active. It is surprising that we still do not see a genuine SE society. In my own personal experience, the most significant development is that SE has influence and is respected. For example, now companies ask for software engineers, they know what it means, and they know that it is different form asking for a computer scientist. Engineers in other fields are coming to realize that SEs are real engineers. They use to view software as a minor little aspect of the systems they built and now they often view software as the major architectural influence. This will have a tremendous impact on the way we educate people, because SE is no longer a single course, but a discipline with a rich tapestry of topics and specialties. (Nancy) Languages have been volatile, but that is something we would expect. There has been some volatility in methodologies - as Denis mentioned OO has changed from something that was the exception to something that has become quite common and significant. On the process end, we have seen two trends: the growth of models like the CMM(R); and at the same time, kind of an anti-CMM focus that might be characterized by some of the extreme methodologies. Perhaps this anti-focus is the result of a combination of the web applications and the whole dot-com phenomenon, and the extensive use of licensed software, where time-to-market is a driving force. These areas as most volatile in order to respond to trends. The less volatile areas are what we might call the basics of software engineering. There is still a need for design methods, for planning and tracking mechanisms, and for estimation and measurement. In the last ten years, the need for these has been constant, both in software development and in software education programs. (Ana) The most volatile part of SE are the software development techniques that had to be adapted to the technological environment. For example, with the development of distributed technology, new development methods (mainly related to software design) have been defined. With Internet technology, new ways of developing software (special methods for identification of requirements, estimation, design, etc.), with important time and functionality restrictions, have been emerged. The most stable part of SE has been the classical software lifecycles (cascade, prototyping, incremental development) and the continuing need for management (planning, quality assurance, etc.), technical (analysis, design, coding) and support (documentation, user communication, etc.) activities. The techniques for carrying out these activities have changed, but their essence has not changed. As others have mentioned, the relevance of software process activities has increased. In addition, the higher abstraction level of programming and the changes due to web development have had a major impact in my school's programs. The educational challenge is to add these new areas, while not sacrificing the classical development techniques. That means that it would be very useful to have a flexible curriculum that makes it possible to include new subjects in an agile way. This is not always possible due to, at least in the Spanish university, the bureaucratic activity. *********************************************************** (Tom) How would you characterize the current state of software engineering education? Are universities providing the proper education for software engineers? Does industry provide adequate training and support for life-long learning in order to keep their software engineers technical competent and current? Is there proper and adequate communication and coordination between academia and industry about the preparation of software engineers? (Ana) A year ago, I analyzed different SE and CS curricula, both in Europe and in the States. CS curricula had a very low percentage of SE knowledge, as little as 8%. While in SE programs the percentage was high, growing to a mean of about 40%. Nevertheless, analyzing the content of SE programs, one observes an important lack of activities related to management (estimation, planning, configuration management, quality assurance, etc.). From a business perspective, these are crucial issues. In general, my opinion is that industry does not provide sufficient training for its software engineers. Small companies are even less conscious of the correct application of software engineering techniques, as they are involved in short-term business concerns. Big companies use to show more interest in training their employees, although it is not as much as it should be. Reports of how training activities have improved companies might motivate others to try similar things. In addition, an increase in SE programs will help the industrial training problem, as they might become more relevant to industry needs. In general, I would say there is insufficient communication and coordination between academia and industry. Although I have been involved in a few fruitful collaborations for SE Master programs, with important benefits for both academia and industry involved, this is not the general rule. One way to improve this would be to involve industry in the development of SE curricula; and hopefully, speed up the changes in SE programs. (Nancy) There are a number of universities that are providing very good education for software engineers. The growth of masters degree programs in SE over the last ten years has been significant. The introduction of undergraduate SE programs is a developing trend, with precedent for this in the international community. Over the last ten years, industry training and support has actually deteriorated, as the marketplace and career outlook has changed. Most SEs, unlike me, don't go to a single company and stay there for much of their career. They change jobs frequently - partly as a result, many companies don't see any benefit to providing life-long learning. My observation is that industry training programs have been cut significantly. The plus side of this is some are turning to universities to help with their training needs. I think that is good and I would hope we will see more of an orientation toward life-long learning. In the U.S., using CMU's MSE as an example, initially most students were from the U.S., being supported by industry. Right now, there is very little U.S. industry support for full-time degree programs like that. There has been some very nice collaboration between industry and academe, to not only prepare SEs initially, but to keep them current throughout their careers. We have tracked those efforts over the last five years - some are quite good, but this does not represent a large effort. This has occurred through advisory boards, joint projects, industry folks teaching at universities, and other collaborative types of efforts. I think there is some optimism in this area. One area that we have failed as educators is in our inability to make a business case for SE education. It has never been viewed as something that has a return from a business perspective, which has limited our impact on what goes on in industry. (Dennis) At the university level, universities are starting to add degrees, courses, and breadth - putting SE in the catalog with an actual title and a section of its own. That's all good, but I still see a significant problem of inadequate breadth; particularly in terms of courses that reflect things that universities do not pay much attention to, but industry needs. A classical example being configuration management, which many of the industry leaders say is one of the crucial things we need to do well in order to survive in future major software efforts. Yet, it is hard to find any university course that touches on configuration management. One of the fundamental problems I see in this area is the lack of a widely accepted definition of SE. When I went through CS, many organizations collaborated to define what CS was, and a lot of universities that decided to have CS programs basically took the recommendations of the professional societies and ran with the ball - that worked out pretty well. With SE there has been resistance to that sort of thing. I see this as a problem, more political than anything else, that is acting as a barrier to universities developing programs that are widely recognized and accepted by industry. Companies say you don't agree with each other on what SE is, so how am I suppose to know what a degree in SE really means. Another problem concerns the tremendous influence of rapid development methods stemming from the internet and the web, etc.. To me those things have aligned with the general shortsightedness of most companies to convince them that they do not need to bother educating their people in SE, all they need to do is teach them the latest and greatest buzzword techniques for software development, because that is what everyone else is doing. It is amazing how often I have seen people fall on their swords over those kinds of issues and learn the same lessons we have been learning for years. As a result, in the area of interaction and coordination I see a major problem in that we do not have any initiatives that are of any real size going on. What I do see happening is a lot of non-traditional things like certificate programs, non-credit programs, all of these certification things - varying in quality and substance. What this shows is a crying need for industry education. (Heidi) Is industry is providing the proper education for SEs? - yes and no. What I see is a need just to produce more SEs. I very frequently get contacted about whether I know of an available SE graduate. We just don't provide enough graduates. There are some very good SE programs out there and then there are some no so good. One of primary advances in SE education is that we are making some solid strides in codifying it - at least getting an understanding of what basic things need to be in a curriculum, with some common backing from industry in things like SWEBOK. It gives a common foundation on which to build. The weaknesses in the university programs are things that are inherent in universities: there tend to be large, slow moving bureaucracies where introducing a new course or getting a curriculum change can take years, when there is an immediate and apparent need to be addressed. Also, we need to use industrial advisory boards (IABs) to improve the integration between industry and academia. This might foster initiatives for funding from industry. Industry's support for life-long learning varies highly and when budgets go down, it is the first thing that goes. This is not a good way to insure continued education of SEs. Some of the strengths of industrial training programs is that they provide a bit more of a business perspective and they address niche areas not addressed by university programs. There has been an increase in what Dennis called "alternative programs" - industry is asking for a academic programs that are a mix of traditional semester/term course and short courses. Yes, they want an SE degree, but along with a feature, where a student has to take several from a collection short course electives. The other thing that I have noticed is that the more defense-oriented companies, like Lockheed and United Technologies, have a clear understanding of what SE is and what their training needs are. The latecomers, who are starting to recognize that they really have need for SE, have no idea of what training they need or how to obtain such it. As a result, they tend to flit from hot topic to hot topic, not understanding the difference between CMM(R) and the latest quick production method. (Don) I think we are dealing with many political issues in academia: issues that computer scientists were facing with EEs and mathematicians 30 years ago. We have seen a significant desire by some faculty to keep the status quo of CS and try to argue that "there is not that much difference between SE and CS, and we are doing a lot of what SE claims to do anyway". So part of the problem is CS programs that do not perceive themselves as having any weaknesses in the preparation of their students, even though most of their graduates are going into software development. One thing mentioned to me recently is that if your look at the three major areas of SE (management, organization and development) and if you look at something like the CMM(R) key processes, ISO 9000, etc., you will see about 30% of that is development and the other 70% is organization and management. Mostly, CS programs focus on development, and I believe they really don't focus as much on development as most SE programs, especially application software in different application domains. To address these weaknesses, I believe we need more undergraduate and graduate SE degree programs. We are starting to see that and I think we will see more over the next several years. I agree with Heidi that IABs are a great way to improve communication between academia and industry. For SERTEC (the software engineering research center at Texas Tech) we do have an IAB with which we discuss academic issues. I wish the employers of our graduates would talk more about the need for SEs. We need to help employers to understand that there is this different field of SE developing and if they want their employees to have education in the SE, rather than CS, they should be encouraging academia in this direction. (Heidi) Don's remark about emphasizing the SE picture reminded me of comments I have heard from those hiring new students - "they may have a wonderful understanding of the SE principles, but they lack an understanding of differing priorities based on business needs". The SE education community needs to address this issue. (Denis) They say there are two ways to make change: one is enlightened leadership and the other one is intolerable pain. Ninety-eight percent of the time change occurs because of the latter. I think we have had some enlightened leadership in certain companies and I have worked with a number of these companies. For example, a company came to me about a year ago and said "we have too many hackers and we want to generate real SEs - the nature of our business requires that our software be highly reliable". This is a commercial company that builds a product that the nation's economy depends on. They have a VP that allocated a half a million dollars a year for the next five years to do genuine SE education of his workforce of about 400 people. The point is that there are people that are leading the way, but the problem with most companies has is that they don't yet have enough "intolerable pain". *********************************************************** (Tom) Looking into your "crystal ball", what do you see ten years from now. What will be the principal concerns and issues with the education and training of software engineers? What SE knowledge areas will be "hot"? Which will be outdated? What will be the status of software engineering education in academia throughout the world? What will be the state of SE licensing and certification? How will it affect education and training programs? (Ana) The most relevant hot areas might be testing, quality assurance, and new development techniques for new technologies, such as web development. On the other hand, I do not think that any SE topic will be completely outdated. My main view about the future of SE education is from Europe. There will probably be specialties in CS programs for SE instead of pure SE programs. Probably the general existence of specific SE programs will take more time. The main reason is that many companies do not appreciate the need to distinguish between SE and CS, so in general they will not require explicit capacities for SE that differ from CS. When the software market is stabilized and there is less demand of software practitioners, companies might be more careful in choosing employees with the right SE capacities. Although there are important international actions regarding both licensing and certification, I believe their real benefits are generally not appreciated, at least by the European industry. I might venture that when this situation changes those topics will be more seriously considered by SE education and training programs. (Don) I agree with Ana that not much in SE will be outdated. In the next ten years, we are going to see, both in the U.S. & Canada, that SE degree programs at all levels will become commonplace. There probably will be ten more years of growth beyond that and then it will move into a kind of steady state. We will also see a change in CS, how CS is taught, and its role in the university. This will be traumatic, more so in some places than others. We are seeing in Canada a lot of progress in SE certification and licensing, and the IEEE Computer Society is establishing a general certification program for SEs, titled the Software Development Professional Certification Program. As far as licensing is concerned, NCEES (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying) has indicated that they will act very slowly toward this, so in 10 years maybe we will have a licensing exam in SE. (Heidi) Hot areas will be distributed SE, web engineering, and engineering on the internet. Anything that is not directly useful will become outdated. So I think, for instance, (don't shoot me) formal methods will become less utilized, but used in more specifically focused areas. A scary thought is that if we say nothing will be outdated - the implication is that there will be lots of new things that come along that we have to learn about, in addition to all of the topics and subjects that are already there. In SE education I would like to see more of a trickle down effect where you start to see the preliminary, basic SE studied in high school. I believe that SE will become more clearly distinct and defined as a discipline. When ten years from now someone says he/his has an SE degree, there will be a universal understanding of what that means. The issue of licensing and certification will continue to go forward and it may start to drive the direction of SE education. For example, in the industry I interact with Microsoft certification has value and it's useful; employers like to see some sort of certification. The emphasis on the "practical side" in certification exams will influence more programs to include a practical component. We may see programs that simply focus on "How do I pass the licensing exam?" (Dennis) On the hot vs. outdated question, there is a definition of terms issue. For example, is COBOL outdated? It is still used a lot and it is still around. So, in the sense that COBOL is not hot today, C++ and Java will not be hot 10 years from now - but something else that will be hot. I also think programming per se will be going away. Increasingly we will find ourselves "programming" in a context in which we design, push a button and it works. This is what we are now doing with a lot GUI programming. We will see a migration to programming in the large. I also think we are going to see a tremendous move toward the direction of mobile everything. People are going to have cell phones that they can do their hacking/programming on at the disco (although disco will be replaced by something else). I think extreme programming will be considered outdated - it may still be around, but there will be a son of a son of XP. I think by then they will have learned that XP is not the Holy Grail that everyone thinks it is. In the area of education, we will continue to see lots of SE programs. Also, accreditation is going to have an affect because accreditation is so widely accepted in the engineering community. We will start to see accredited SE programs popping up, and there will eventually be more programs seeking Se accreditation than currently in CS -simply because it is more accepted in the community of engineers. One of the most significant things happening in industry is the subcontracting of the training function. To the extent that the academic world does not embrace that, the business will go to non- academic suppliers, people that are in the business of training for training's sake. Of course, most universities are not in education for education's sake, they are in research for research's sake. I mean it, in the sense of "who is your customer" or "who do you really pay attention to". So I think we are going to find a proliferation of degrees, certificates, licenses and non-traditional degree type things that have recognized names. We have mentioned the Microsoft certification. Licensing may or may not take hold, but other things will take hold. There will be things recognized by industry and supplied by suppliers of one kind or another. So I see a lot of education going on and see it taking on some sort of overall architecture and structure. The only real question is to what extent universities will be part of that structure. Finally, on the international scene, I agree with Heidi's comment about the definition becoming more solid. I also see a wider acceptance of standards in the field of SE. This will have an impact on education as well. (Nancy) I think the concern about terrorism, as related to computing, will have a significant impact over the next 10 years. To some extent, this will drive the way some systems are developed and the way SEs are educated. It is a specialty that Dennis and I have seen in the defense area. There has been exponential growth in last three years in the attacks on computer systems. Trying to factor those considerations into the way software is developed has been a very slow process. I am not sure how to anticipate changes in industrial training and industry's support for education. It certainly has not done well over the last ten years. The jury is out on whether that will change. Our industry has been hard to predict, and as a result their training needs are hard to predict. *********************************************************** (Tom) Finally, what is your opinion of the contribution of FASE to software engineering education and training? What changes would you suggest to improve its contribution? (Ana) The main contribution in my view is the ability of FASE to diffuse information and opinion about the relevance of SE education. It would be useful if FASE was more widely distributed and read by the international SE community. For example, in Europe it is almost unknown in CS schools, where SE is taught, due to the lack of generalized SE programs. (Dennis) FASE reminds of the CACM back in the first few years of it publication, when it was really useful. I believe if you look at the evolution of publications, you see something similar to the evolution of a discipline or a university department - it starts off being kind of wild and wooly, and very much tied in with where the action is. Over time, it becomes more mature, stable, and part of the infrastructure. The well managed ones stay in that middle phase for a long time, but eventually they all sort of become the bastions of the old way of doing things, and they become outdated and not very widely read. It reminds me of a handout I give my students on how to publish a paper - there is a scale for publications that in one dimension measures how widely it is read and on the other dimension is how prestigious it is - the two are sort of mutually exclusive. I really think phase has been marvelous. However, I think it ought move up to the next step. What I am thinking of is web site - something like an online newspaper or newsletter, with regular departments and an editorial structure to it. (Nancy) I think FASE has been tremendous. When we first came up with this idea at a CSEET conference and Keith Pierce started it, I never would have anticipated the growth in subscribers, the high quality of the publication (especially under Don's tenure), and the relevance of the articles - it's just been terrific. In reference to Dennis's publication life-cycle model, one of my colleagues refers to journals in the latter stage of the cycle as "write only" journals. FASE is anything but! The only change in FASE I would like to see, although I don't know how to make it happen, is to have more industry participation. (Heidi) I think it gives a whole lot of bang for the buck. (Nancy - anything relative to zero works.) I just think that it is a great method for facilitating communication, it raises consciousness, it keeps me current on what's happening in the education area across a variety of venues and across the U.S. I agree with Ana's comment and would like to see it expand its reach across the world. I think it is under read and underutilized. Recently I found in an old email from someone in industry (responding to a survey the WGSEET did in FASE some time ago) talking about how great FASE was and how he was going to pass it along to his boss and 40 other employees. (Don) One of the things not been mentioned about FASE is that it is an independent entity. That means it has to be a completely volunteer entity, which keeps us from being able to do some things. I agree with Dennis - an online newsletter version would be great. But, the independence has been important - never more so, than a year ago when we had the ACM and the Computer Society at war over SWECC (ACM pulling out of SWECC because of the licensing issue). FASE took no public stance on the issue, although it was well known that some of the staff had very strong personal opinions about what should be done. People on both sides of the issue were willing to talk to us and maybe we were able to facilitate a little bit of discussion. There are only two groups that are really independent in SE or SE education - the other is the Working Group (WGSEET), which is kind of a think tank. I think FASE is really great and is well known throughout the world. We underestimate its impact sometimes - e.g., Keith Pierce did not realize the reaction he was going to get to his April Fool's joke in 1994. I believe Keith Pierce and Laurie Werth, and the others that started it, did a wonderful job. As far as improvements, I would like to see some regular columns in FASE, much as in similar print magazines. After my term as managing editor ends I would like to do one of them. Finally, I would like to encourage the FASE community to be champions of SE, both as an academic discipline and as a profession. Being champions, proponents and advocates of SE education and SE as a profession is something that is vital to the continued progress of the discipline. (R)CMM is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ News Items ###################################################################### By: Don Bagert (Professional Issues Editor) ACM Ubiquity Article on SE Provokes Strong Response The October 22, 2001 (Volume 2, Number 33) issue of Ubiquity, an online IT publication and forum of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) contains the article "What is Software Engineering?" The article was written by Bill Curran, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Southeastern Louisiana University. The article begins with the one-sentence abstract "The name [software engineering] implies scientific rigor, and opens software engineering to the charge that it is a pseudo-science flying under false colors." In his article, Curran writes, "What is software engineering? Nobody seems to know...there is little consensus as to what it is...Authors [of software engineering introductory textbooks] claiming in their introductions that, e.g., 'Software engineering employs engineering methods, processes, techniques and measurement.' Exactly what those engineering methods, processes, techniques and measurements are, is never stated, and the books never refer to them after the introduction...A software engineer is no more an engineer than a novelist is a word engineer... "To be sure, there are many areas of software research that are properly called scientific. Bearing this in mind, we should re-name software engineering, dividing it into (A) software theory/research, and (B) software production techniques." The discussion forum for this article contained a number of responses strongly disagreeing with Dr. Curran, two examples of which are provided below. From Dennis Frailey: "Computer science is arguably an artificial science. Software engineering is not computer science, at least as practiced today, and does not purport to be a science. It purports to be an emerging form of engineering, perhaps at the state of maturity today where aeronautical engineering was about 1920... "There is an emerging body of systematic methods and quantifiable results that are forming the core of software engineering as a discipline. For example, measures of software complexity, coupling, and cohesion. Or 'clean room' methods in which one uses formal models to evaluate requirements and designs before proceeding to construction...We are, indeed, in the early youth of this discipline, but engineering methods are being applied. They appear in the literature and in advanced texts on the subject. They are widely practiced in some industries. True, they often do not appear in the introductory texts...[b]ut that will change." Paul E. MacNeil wrote: Engineering is not science, not in any area of engineering nor in any area of science. Engineering science (such as physics for electrical and mechanical engineering) does involve rigor, but [they] are not sciences. The statement, 'The name implies scientific rigor...' is incorrect, and reinforces the notion that traditional computer science does not understand the difference between science and engineering. Statements such as, 'Of course SE is an artificial science...' offer yet more reinforcement for this notion... "Engineering involves engineering practice. Practice in any branch of engineering may be more or less rigorous, frequently less. That software engineering should involve non-rigorous practice demonstrates that software engineering has much in common with traditional engineering..." (Thanks to Vicki Almstrum for bringing this to the attention of the FASE community through a message to the FASE-TALK discussion list, which subsequently had its own discussion thread on the topic - see http://www.cs.ttu.edu/fase/fase-talk.htm#ubiquity.) ###################################################################### By: Don Bagert (Professional Issues Editor) IEEE Computer Reports ABA Takes Active Opposition to UCITA The October 2001 issue of IEEE Software (Volume 34, Number 10), contains on page 21 an article entitled "Controversial Software Law Hits Resistance". This article discusses the announcement by the American Bar Association (ABA), the leading professional organization for lawyers in the United States, of its active opposition to the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). UCITA is a software licensing law developed by the US-based National Conference on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) and submitted to the different state legislatures in the United States for adoption. ABA's opposition is being led by its Torts Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) of its Technology Committee. TIPS is forming a task force that is now discussing the issue with NCCUSL representatives. The TIPS website on the subject can be found at http://www.abanet.org/TIPS/UCITA, and previous FASE articles on UCITA can be found in its November and December 2000 issues. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Calls for Participation ###################################################################### From: Tom Hilburn Call for Articles for Special Issue of IEEE Software Software Engineering Education: A Focus on Practice This special education issue is focused on the methods and techniques for enhancing software education programs to provide graduates with the knowledge and skills generally needed for an industrial software career. The needs most commonly expressed by industry are for graduates who can predictably produce secure and high quality systems in a timely and cost effective manner. The issue will present an international perspective about the needs for educating software professionals. We would like to see at least 50% of the papers come from authors with non-U.S. experiences and views. We solicit papers that discuss the pros and cons of increasing academic emphasis on skills and practices as well as papers that describe alternative approaches for addressing the growing need for skilled and capable software engineers. Specifically, we encourage submissions that address the needs and concerns of those that hire and manage software professionals. While theoretical or opinion pieces will be considered, primary emphasis will be on papers that discuss specific education programs and experiences with these programs. Similarly, articles that discuss industrial needs for re-education, including examples of non-university programs that address such needs, or other programs needed before graduate software professionals can be effectively utilized in industry. The following are some potential topics and ideas for this special issue: * the balance between theory, technology, and practice * experience reports with professional education * software processes in the curriculum * teaching software engineering practices (e.g., project management, requirements, design, construction, etc.) * quality and security practices * team building * software engineering in beginning courses * computer science education vs. software engineering education * undergraduate vs. graduate software engineering education * non-traditional education (e.g., distance education, asynchronous learning, laboratory teaching) * innovative software engineering courses or curricula * training for the workplace Paper submissions must be sent to the special issue editors on or before April 1, 2002. If you would like advance editorial comment on a proposed paper, submit an extended abstract to the special issue editors. Abstracts received by February 1, 2002 will be reviewed and comments returned by February 15, 2002. Manuscripts must not exceed 5,400 words including figures and tables, which count for 200 words each. Submissions in excess of these limits may be rejected without refereeing. The articles we deem within the theme's scope will be peer-reviewed and are subject to editing for magazine style, clarity, organization, and space. We reserve the right to edit the title of all submissions. Be sure to include the name of the theme for which you are submitting a paper. Interested authors should contact the special issue editors for more information about the focus and the magazine assistant (MA) at software@computer.org for author guidelines and submission details. Guest Editors: Watts S. Humphrey Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Work: 941-924-4169 FAX: 941-925-1573 email: watts@sei.cmu.edu Thomas B. Hilburn Department of Computing and Mathematics Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach, FL 32114 work: 386-226-6889 FAX: 386-226-6678 email: hilburn@db.erau.edu ###################################################################### From: John Mylopoulos via Nancy Mead Call for Papers CAiSE'02 14th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering Toronto, Canada 27 - 31 May, 2002 http://www.cs.toronto.edu/caise02 Conference Aims and Objectives Since the late 1980's, CAiSE conferences have provided a forum for presentation and exchange of research results and practical experiences within the field of Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE'02 will be held for the first time outside Europe, in the cosmopolitan city of Toronto. Toronto has been called the most multicultural city in the world, hosting more than 50,000 new immigrants per year, and boasting more than 100 languages spoken by some of its citizens. As in previous years, the conference programme will feature invited talks, technical paper presentations, workshops, tutorials and panel discussions. Conference Theme Web-based systems have become the status quo in information systems engineering practice. This change to the nature of information systems poses significant challenges to the research community, such as faster time-to-market, increased concerns for security and performance, open and evolving software architectures, dynamically composed electronic services, and more. The main theme of the CAiSE'02 conference will be "Web-Based Information Systems" and the conference programme will focus on both technologies and methodologies for building them. Relevant Topics Methodologies and Models for IS Requirements Engineering for IS Supply Chain Management Infrastructure for Internet Business Models Data Warehousing & OLAP E-government Information Quality Privacy and Security, Web Content Management and Distribution Workflow Systems Knowledge Management Business Process Models and Engineering Metadata and Ontologies Cooperative Work Support Novel Database Technologies Distributed, Web and Mobile Architectures OO and Agent-Oriented Technologies and their Applications to IS Development XML and IS Languages and Protocols for IS Component-ware and IS IS Reengineering Advanced Application Domains Validation and Evaluation of IS Models Call for Papers Papers are solicited either in the area of the general conference theme or relevant to the list of topics given above. Papers should not exceed 5,000 words. They must be original and not submitted to or accepted by any other conference or journal. Proceedings from CAiSE'02 will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science. The proceedings from previous CAiSE conferences are also available in this series. As in previous years, the best papers of the conference will be proposed for publication (after revision and additional refereeing) in a special issue of the international journal "Information Systems". Submission details Authors should submit an electronic copy of their paper, in postscript or PDF format, to one of the programme committee co-chairs (John Mylopoulos or Carson Woo). In their submission message, authors should indicate the name and email address of the contact author. Call for Panels and Tutorials Proposals are solicited for tutorials and panels to be held together with the conference. Tutorials can be either a half-day (3 hours) or a full-day (6 hours). They should be directed at participants from both the academic and business communities. Panel and tutorial proposals should include a title, an abstract and a short biography of the proposer(s). Panel proposals should also include a list of possible panel members. Tutorial proposals should indicate whether it is proposed as a half- or full-day tutorial and the intended audience in terms of background and level of expertise. Proposals should be sent to the Tutorial and Panel chair. Call for Posters A special area for the display of posters about innovative projects and prototypes will be available during the conference. Poster proposals should include a title, the name of the presenters and a one-page outline describing the project and what would be presented. Proposals should be sent to the Workshop and Poster Chair. Call for Workshops A series of workshops will be held in conjunction with the CAiSE'02 conference to encourage interaction between researchers. Workshop topics should be in-line with the conference topics. We invite proposals for workshops stating the topic and overall objectives of the workshop and giving a short curriculum vitae of the proposed organiser(s). Note that the workshops are considered an important part of the CAiSE'02 conference and all workshop participants are expected to also attend the main conference. Proposals should be sent to the Workshop and Poster Chair. Important Dates 27 - 28 May 2002 : Workshops 29 - 31 May 2002 : Conference Submission Deadlines 30 October 2001 : Workshop Proposals 30 November 2001 : Paper, Panel & Tutorial 01 March 2002 : Poster Descriptions Acceptance Notifications 03 December 2001 : Workshop Proposals 01 February 2002 : Paper, Panel & Tutorial 01 April 2002 : Poster Descriptions Conference Organization General Chair Tamer Ozsu Dept. of Computer Science University of Waterloo Waterloo, Canada N2L 3G1 email: tozsu@db.uwaterloo.ca Programme Committee Co-Chairs John Mylopoulos Dept. of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 3H5 email: jm@cs.toronto.edu Carson Woo Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia Canada V6T 1Z2 email: carson.woo@ubc.ca Panel and Tutorial Co-Chairs Jarek Gryz Dept. of Computer Science York University Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3 email: jarek@cs.yorku.ca Rich Paige Dept. of Computer Science York University Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3 email: paige@cs.yorku.ca Workshop and Poster Chair Patrick Martin Dept. of Computing and Information Science Queen's University Kingston, Canada K7L 3N6 email: martin@cs.queensu.ca Local Chair Manuel Kolp Dept. of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 3H5 email: mkolp@cs.toronto.edu Program Committee Members Ken Barker (Canada) Daniel Berry (Canada) Alex Borgida (USA) Paul Bowen (Australia) Sjaak Brinkkemper (The Netherlands) Michael Brodie (USA) Christoph Bussler (USA) Silvana Castano (Italy) Jan Dietz (The Netherlands) Johan Eder (Austria) Marcel Franckson (France) Mariagrazia Fugini (Italy) Antonio Furtado (Brazil) Andreas Geppert (Switzerland) Paolo Giorgini (Italy) Martin Glinz (Switzerland) Sol Greenspan (USA) Alan Hevner (USA) Juhani Iivari (Finland) Sushil Jajodia (USA) Keith Jeffery (UK) Manfred Jeusfeld (The Netherlands) Hermann Kaindl (Austria) Hannu Kangassalo (Finland) Gerti Kappel (Austria) Steven Kimbrough (USA) Kostas Kontogiannis (Canada) Manolis Koubarakis (Greece) Alberto Laender (Brazil) Julio Leite (Brazil) Maurizio Lenzerini (Italy) Michel Leonard (Switzerland) Qing Li (China) Marin Litoiu (Canada) Peri Loucopoulos (UK) Kalle Lyytinen (Finland) Neil Maiden (UK) Sal March (USA) Pat Martin (Canada) Nancy R. Mead (USA) Michele Missikoff (Italy) David Monarchi (USA) Hausi Mueller (Canada) Oscar Nierstrasz (Switzerland) Andreas Oberweis (Germany) Antoni Olive (Spain) Andreas L Opdahl (Norway) Maria Orlowska (Australia) Maurizio Panti (Italy) Mike Papazoglou (The Netherlands) Jeff Parsons (Canada) Oscar Pastor (Spain) Barbara Pernici (Italy) Alain Pirotte (Belgium) Dimitris Plexousakis (Greece) Klaus Pohl (Germany) Radhakrishnan.T (Canada) Sudha Ram (USA) William Robinson (USA) Colette Rolland (France) Michel Scholl (France) Michael Schrefl (Australia) Timos Sellis (Greece) Mike Shaw (USA) Keng Siau (USA) Jacob Slonim (Canada) Arne Soelvberg (Norway) Veda Storey (USA) Eleni Stroulia (Canada) Alistair Sutcliffe (UK) Mohan Tanniru (USA) Bernhard Thalheim (Germany) Costantino Thanos (Italy) Aphrodite Tsalgatidou (Greece) Yannis Vassiliou (Greece) Yair Wand (Canada) Benkt Wangler (Sweden) Tony Wasserman (USA) Christopher Welty (USA) Roel Wieringa (The Netherlands) Eric Yu (Canada) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Contact and General Information about FASE FASE is published on the 15th of each month by the FASE staff. Article and Faculty Ad Submission Guidelines Send newsletter articles to one of the editors, preferably by category: Articles pertinent to academic education to Tom Hilburn ; corporate and government training to David Carter ; professional issues, faculty ads, and all other categories, to Don Bagert . If the article is for a FASE topic where there is a guest editor, the submission should instead be to that person, according to the schedule provided. Items must be submitted by the 8th of the month in order to be considered for inclusion in that month's issue. Also, please see the submission guidelines immediately below. FASE submission format guidelines: All submissions must be in ASCII format, and contain no more than 70 characters per line (71 including trailing blanks and the new line character). This 70-character/line format must be viewable in a text editor such as Microsoft Notepad WITHOUT using a "word wrap" facility. All characters (outside of the newline) should in the ASCII code range from 32 to 126 (i.e. "printable" in DOS text mode). All articles contain the viewpoints of their respective authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the FASE staff. _____ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information Everyone that is receiving this by email is on the FASE mailing list. If you wish to leave this list, send a message to and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: unsubscribe fase To rejoin (or have someone else join) the FASE mailing list, write to and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: subscribe fase For instance, if your name is Jane Smith, write: subscribe fase Jane Smith But what if you have something that you want to share with everyone else, before the next issue? For more real-time discussion, there is the FASE-TALK discussion list. It is our hope that it will be to FASE readers what the SIGCSE.members listserv is to that group. (For those of you that don't know, SIGCSE is the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education.) To subscribe to the FASE-TALK list, write to and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: subscribe fase-talk For instance, if your name is Jane Smith, write: subscribe fase-talk Jane Smith Please try to limit FASE-TALK to discussion items related to software engineering education, training and professional issues; CFPs and other such items can still be submitted to the editor for inclusion into FASE. Anyone that belongs to the FASE-TALK mailing list can post to it. As always, there is no cost for subscribing to either FASE or FASE-TALK! (Subscriptions can also be maintained through the Web via http://lyris.acs.ttu.edu. From there, click on "TTU Faculty Mailing Lists", and then either "fase" or "fase-talk", depending on which list you desire.) _____ Back issues (dating from the very first issue) can be found on the web (with each Table of Contents) at in chronological order, or in reverse order. _____ The FASE Staff: Tom Hilburn -- Academic Editor Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Department of Computing and Mathematics Daytona Beach FL 32114 USA Phone: 904-226-6889 Fax: 904-226-6678 Email: hilburn@db.erau.edu URL: http://faculty.erau.edu/hilburn/ David Carter -- Corporate/Government Editor 807 Hwy 1204 #B-2 Pineville LA 71360 Phone: 318-641-0824 Email: dacarter@bayou.com Don Bagert, P.E. -- Managing Editor and Professional Issues Editor Department of Computer Science 8th and Boston Texas Tech University Lubbock TX 79409-3104 USA Phone: 806-742-1189 Fax: 806-742-3519 Email: Don.Bagert@ttu.edu URL: http://www.cs.ttu.edu/faculty/bagert.html Laurie Werth -- Advisory Committee Taylor Hall 2.124 University of Texas at Austin Austin TX 78712 USA Phone: 512-471-9535 Fax: 512-471-8885 Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu Nancy Mead -- Advisory Committee Software Engineering Institute 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Phone: 412-268-5756 Fax: 412-268-5758 Email: nrm@sei.cmu.edu