Systems Engineering Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition

11SOFTWARE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Advancing information technology (IT) is the driving element to what many have called the “information revolution,” changing the face of much of modern industry, commerce, finance, education, entertainment—in fact, the very way of life in developed countries. IT has accomplished this feat largely by automating tasks that had been performed by human beings, doing more complex operations than had been possible, and doing them faster and with great precision. Not only has this capability given rise to a whole range of new complex software-controlled systems but it has also been embedded in nearly every form of vehicle and appliance, and even in children’s toys.

The previous chapters discussed the application of systems engineering principles and practice to all types of systems and system elements without regard to whether they were implemented in hardware or software. Software engineering, however, has advanced along a separate path than systems engineering. And only recently have the two paths begun to converge. Many principles, techniques, and tools are similar for both fields, and research has fostered the evolving merger.

The term software systems engineering was proposed by Dr. Winston Royce, father of the waterfall chart, early in the history of software engineering to represent the natural relationship between the two. However, the term was not adopted by the growing software community, and the term software engineering became the moniker ...