Things Software

Software Engineering: Folklore and Reality

The term software engineering was coined in 1968 at the famous NATO workshop that took place in Garmish, Germany. The main motivation for the workshop, and introducing the term, was to address the crisis that had been plaguing the then software industry since the 1960s. According to many observers, researchers,  industry veterans, and consultants, this crisis has been continuing, indeed growing, to date. The most cited proof of that impression are the infamous CHAOS reports published by The Standish Group.

Have the numerous technological and process innovations of the past 40 years really failed utterly? Undoubtedly there have been both failures and successes, but does this amount to an industry-wide crisis? The practice of software engineering is laden with myths, most of which have been treated by laypeople and experts alike as scientific facts. This talk will shed light to the common myths in an attempt to separate reality from folklore.

African Conference on Software Engineering and Applied Computing