Chapter 9 Software Engineering Process

The software engineering process Knowledge Area has witnessed dramatic growth over the last decade. This was partly due to a recognition by major acquirers of systems where software is a major component that process issues can have an important impact on the ability of their suppliers to deliver. Therefore, they encouraged a focus on the software engineering process as a way to remedy this. Furthermore, the academic community has recently pursued an active research agenda in developing new tools and techniques to support software engineering processes, and also empirically studying these processes and their improvement. It should also be recognized that many software engineering process issues are closely related to other disciplines, namely those in the management sciences, albeit they have used a different terminology. The industrial adoption of software engineering process technology has also been increasing, as demonstrated by a number of published success stories. Therefore, there is in fact an extensive body of knowledge on the software engineering process. Keywords