| Software is a disruptive technology that has changed how almost every
sector of human society and the economy works. Software is now pervasive;
it is a component of almost every industrial product or at least
essential to the development of such products. Software capabilities lie at
the core of the new national and international information-based economy.
This mission criticality of software imposes increasingly stringent demands
on business organizations that depend on software systems or are responsible
for software development. The Darwinian nature of modern business
competition makes software development a struggle for survival in an
unpredictable environment characterized by intense pressures for rapid
development; decreased time to market; flexible and easy-to-use applications;
and low cost. It is now more important than ever for software
developers, project managers, and business organizations to understand
and implement diversified, multidisciplinary software development environments
in their organizations.
Strategic Software Engineering: an Interdisciplinary Approach
addresses these needs by offering a view of software engineering as a
strategic, business-oriented, interdisciplinary enterprise, rather than as a
primarily technical and scientifically focused process. We view software
technology as a tool for achieving business goals in collaboration with all
the affected stakeholder communities. Although we address many of the
technical and scientific aspects of development extensively, this is done
in a way that is broadly accessible. We critically review software development
models and processes. We consider how software has been
created in the past and with what shortcomings as well as what new
paradigms are emerging that reflect how development should be done.
We provide a strategic, business-oriented assessment of the forces that
have influenced the development of software process models in order to
better understand what measures or directions should be taken to further
improve them. We extensively address the relation between problemsolving
techniques and strategies for effectively solving real-world problems.
Finally, we consider the impact of interdisciplinary factors on software
development, including the critical role of people and financial
factors. |
