About software engineering

Software engineering is the application of principles used in the field of engineering, which usually deals with physical systems, to the design, development, testing, deployment and management of software systems.

The field of software engineering applies the disciplined, structured approach to programming that is used in engineering to software development with the stated goal of improving the quality, time and budget efficiency, along with the assurance of structured testing and engineer certification.

Software engineering is typically used for large and intricate software systems rather than single applications or programs. Development, however, is simply one phase of the process. While a software engineer is typically responsible for the design of systems, programmers are often responsible for coding its implementation.

Software engineering involves a number of fields that cover the process of engineering software and certification including: requirements gathering, software design, software construction, software maintenance, software configuration management, software engineering managent, software development process management and creation, software engineering models and methods, software quality, software engineering professional practices as well as foundational computing and mathematical and engineering study.

Though the original use of the term is uncertain, the first software engineering conference was held and sponsored by NATO in 1968. The conference addressed the inconsistency and unreliability in software development as well as the need for better quality and reliability. The conference gathered international experts who agreed the systematic approach of physical world engineering should be applied to software development, as it already was developed with those goals in mind.

Software Evolution
The process of developing a software product using software engineering principles and methods is referred to as software evolution. This includes the initial development of software and its maintenance and updates, till desired software product is developed, which satisfies the expected requirements.

Evolution starts from the requirement gathering process. After which developers create a prototype of the intended software and show it to the users to get their feedback at the early stage of software product development. The users suggest changes, on which several consecutive updates and maintenance keep on changing too. This process changes to the original software, till the desired software is accomplished.

Even after the user has desired software in hand, the advancing technology and the changing requirements force the software product to change accordingly. Re-creating software from scratch and to go one-on-one with requirement is not feasible. The only feasible and economical solution is to update the existing software so that it matches the latest requirements.