Page - 179 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

Developing Software Qualityand Testing Capabilities inHispanic America:... 179 In 1975, the IEEE Computer Society started publishing the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering as a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal and also sponsored the first edition of what became the International Conference on Software Engineering; both continue to this day. It was followed by the IEEE Software magazine in 1984. The British Computer Society sponsored publication of the Software EngineeringJournal (1986–1996,now availablevia IEEE Xplore), and several more conferences and refereed journals related to facets of Software Engineeringhaveappearedsince the1980s. By year 2000, Finkelstein and Kramer defined Software Engineering as “the branch of systems engineering concerned with the development of large and complex software intensive systems. It focuses on: the real-world goals for, services provided by, and constraints on such systems; the precise specification of system structureand behaviour,and the implementationof these specifications; the activities required in order to developan assurance that the specifications and real- world goals have been met; the evolution of such systems over time and across system families. It is also concerned with the processes, methods and tools for the developmentofsoftwareintensivesystemsinaneconomicandtimelymanner”[17]. Recognising the need to establish software engineering as a profession, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE, established the SoftwareEngineeringCoordinatingCommittee in1993 to jointlyworkon: • Defining a Body of Knowledge on software engineering (SWEBOK, now in its thirdversion[18]) • Agreeing on a Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice [19] • Developing curriculum recommendations on software engineering for under- graduate [20]andgraduateeducation[21] • Describinga set ofcompetencies,at five levelsofcompetency[22] (SWECOM) SWEBOK’s objectivesare: 1. To promotea consistentviewofsoftwareengineeringworldwide 2. Tospecifythescopeof,andclarifytheplaceofsoftwareengineeringwithrespect to other disciplines such as computer science, project management, computer engineering,andmathematics 3. To characterize thecontentsof thesoftwareengineeringdiscipline 4. To providea topicalaccess to the SoftwareEngineeringBodyofKnowledge 5. Toprovideafoundationforcurriculumdevelopmentandfor individualcertifica- tionand licensingmaterial Some organisations have sponsored the development of professional certifica- tionsonsoftwarequalityandsoftware testing: • American Society Software Quality Engineering (ASQ): Certified Software QualityEngineer [23]since1996 • International Software Testing QualificationsBoard (ISTQB): Founded in 2002 by 8 country members (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands,