What knowledge is important to a software professional report

What Knowledge is Important to a

Software Professional?

——Timothy C. Lethbridge

A Report in “SE Methods in HCI”

——Danni Wang

2013/04/10

Who is Lethbridge?

B.Sc., M.Sc.（UNB）

Ph.D.( Ottawa, 1994)

Research Complexity Reduction in Software Engineering

Umple language family: Model-oriented programming

Software Engineering Education

“What Knowledge is Important to a Software Engineer?”

IEEE Computer, May, pp. 44-50.

“Priorities for the Education and Training of Software

Engineers”

Journal of Systems and Software., 53, 1, pp. 53-71.

1998 CS&SE Education Relevance

Survey

Goal

to gather data that would be of use to those designing, improving and accrediting academic programs in software engineering, as well as to those training software engineers who are already practicing in industry.

Conducted from May to October 1998

Colleced data from over 200 software practitioners , from which a balanced sample of 180 were used to create the results.

Four Questions

Table 3. Catagorized list of

business, science and arts topics

The 25 most important topics

The 25 least important topics

Amount learned in education

High on both scales(important & learned) Specific programming language

Algorithm design

Operating systems

Highly important but not extensively taught Configuration and release management

Negotiation

Human-computer interaction/user interface

leadership

Overtaught calculus

different equations

linear algebra

chemistry

physics

Most learned topics General software design

Computer science theory

Mathematics categories

Least learned topics Software management

Business

People sills

•Universities consider increasing

coverage of such topics

• corporate trainers give new hires

courses on these topics

•taught less

•apply theory to practice

•shift emphasis

Amount learned on the job

The greatest on-the-job learning software process category

configuration and release management

project management

maintenance and reengineering

testing, verification and quality assurance

Suggestion be targets for new-hire training

increase university coverage

The most forgotten since education theory and mathematics

natural sciencereexamining coverage and teaching

methods for these topics

Amount currently known

The current knowledge gap

the difference between the importance of a

topic and the amount currently known.

corporate training departments

should consider giving additional

courses to employees in these topics.

Conclusion

Universities and colleges

less emphasis on continuous mathematics, basic

science...

more emphasis on people skills, software

process, HCI, real-time system

design, management…

Company

employees are likely to lack knowledge in areas

such as negotiation, leadership, and HCI.

conduct its own survey to discover its particular

needs.

Thank you!