The Future of Software and Systems Engineering Processes

In response to the increasing criticality of software within systems and the increasing demands being put onto software-intensive systems, software and systems engineering processes will evolve significantly over the next two decades. This paper identifies eight relatively surprise-free trends – the increasing interaction of software engineering and systems engineering; increased emphasis on users and end value; increased emphasis on systems and software dependability; increasingly rapid change; increasing global connectivity and need for systems to interoperate; increasingly complex systems of systems; increasing needs for COTS, reuse, and legacy systems and software integration; and computational plenty. It also identifies two “wild card” trends: increasing software autonomy and combinations of biology and computing. It then discusses the likely influences of these trends on software and systems engineering processes between now and 2025, and presents an emerging three-team adaptive process model for coping with the resulting challenges and opportunities of developing 21 st century software-intensive systems and systems of systems.