The Emerging Consensus on the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge

The IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery are working on a joint project to develop a guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). Articulating a body of knowledge is an essential step toward developing a profession because it represents a broad consensus regarding the contents of the discipline. Without such a consensus, there is no way to validate a licensing examination, set a curriculum to prepare individuals for the examination, or formulate criteria for accrediting the curriculum. At the time of writing this paper in September 2000, the SWEBOK project (http://www.swebok.org) is nearing the end of the second of its three phases. Here we summarize the results to date and provide an overview of the project. Keywords Software engineering, software engineering profession, body of knowledge. Objectives and Audience The Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project team established the project with five objectives:

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: JISBD
• Authors: Pierre Bourque, Robert Dupuis, Alain Abran, James W. Moore, Leonard L. Tripp
• Keywords: IEEE Computer Society, JISBD 2000, JISBD 2001, Project, Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge