Software Engineering Hand Book

The Fraunhofer IESE Series on Software Engineering

‘giving the reader a proven basis for engineering complex software systems’

A Handbook of Software and Systems Engineering
Empirical Observations, Laws and Theories

Albert Endres Dieter Rombach

A Handbook of Software and Systems Engineering
Empirical Observations, Laws and Theories

The Fraunhofer IESE Series on Software Engineering
Editor-in-Chief Dieter Rombach (Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE and University of Kaiserslautern) Editorial Board Frank Bomarius (Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany), Dave Parnas (University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland), Karl Reed (La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia), Günther Ruhe (University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Ian Sommerville (Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK), Marvin Zelkowitz (Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, Maryland & University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA)

Whereas software technology is concerned with individual techniques, methods and tools for developing software, such as programming languages, design notations, or test techniques, software engineering takes a holistic view of the entire software development process, regarding it as an integral part of a given organizational, technical and business context. Software engineering does not focus on individual projects only, but treats development activities as steps in an evolutionary process improvement. Like other engineering disciplines, software engineering rests on three pillars:
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“Architectural principles” that can be applied to reduce the complexity of systems “Process technology” for modeling individual process steps and their interaction, and for measuring and controlling their impact ■ “Precise methods” for describing software Software is developed by humans, so the effects of the application of techniques, methods and tools cannot be determined independent of context. A thorough... [continues]

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