Page - 138 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

138 I. Schieferdecker Software companies were responsible for an average of 1.8% of total jobs in the sevenEU countries in this study.” By that, software leaves the pure technical system management and control and serves today increasingly for decision support and decision control in socially critical contexts. The questions that arise are which processes are necessary, how to make the software comprehensible and who bears the responsibility. And how can companies ensure the reliability, quality and security of software in these increasinglycomplexenvironments? Even further,notonly in the use, even in the productionanddistributionof soft- ware, the expectations of customers are exhaustive. Hence, software development is to go faster and faster, the product at the same time getting better and better. Andthisexpectationisnotnecessarilyparadoxical.Inmanycases,DevOps’holistic approachcanactually increaseboththespeedofdeliveryandthequality.Where the word“deliver” in timesofcloudcomputingdoesnot reallycharacterize theprocess anymore. After all, the customer no longer buys a product, but instead access to a service.Even—andespecially—suchaservicewillonlybeacceptedifusers trust it. Important elements in establishing trust are so-called testbeds for field exper- iments and experimental environments for co-innovation. Traceability and trans- parency should be part of software development. Because the complexity of software-based systems continues to grow, and because data retention and use is oftendifficult tounderstand, trust in software is still oftenfragile.Hence,principles ofanti-fragility in softwarehave tobeadded,whichaddfault resilienceandrobust- ness at run time [2]. Also, the traceability of goals, features and responsibilities needtobecomepartofanysoftwareengineeringanddocumentation.Whythis is so important is explained in this quote from computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum: “Acomputerwilldowhatyoutell it todo,but thatmaybemuchdifferentfromwhat you had in mind”. And although methods and tools for high-quality, reliable and securesoftwaredevelopmentareavailable in largenumbers, theyare tobeextended toaddress runtimefaultsaswell [3]. The chapter starts with a general consideration of software and current pressing issues. This is followed by a review of the current understanding of ethical principles in software engineering and draws conclusions towards responsible softwareengineering.A summaryandoutlookcomplete thechapter. 2 Software andRecent Software QualityRequirements Software is basically a set of instructions that tells a computer, embedded control systems or a (micro-)processor what to do and how to do it. Software is not just a programmingcodeonfirmware,operatingsystem,middlewareorapplication level. Italsoconsistsofdata thatrepresentthecontentmanagedbytheprogramsaswellas data that train or steer the programs [4]. In addition, it encompassesmeta-data that represent informationanddocumentationof thesoftware [5].Accordingto ISO[6], software is a “fundamental term for all or part of the programs, procedures, rules,