A technical review of the software construction knowledge area in the SWEBOK guide

Abstract

In May 2001, of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) was released in a Web format and, in December 2001, in book format with the intent to collect comments and possible improvements. Up to now, feedback received confirmed the usefulness of the guide for all documented knowledge areas, with the exception of the software construction knowledge area, for which the content does not map easily to industry practices or to actual academic curricula. After analysis of this specific SWEBOK knowledge area, some issues were identified, such as inconsistencies between the textual descriptions and the visual representations. Furthermore, analysis of this chapter using the Vincenti classification of engineering knowledge types allowed us to identify some additional weaknesses and provided us with guidance on how the structure of this chapter could be improved. This paper proposes a revised breakdown of topics that is more aligned with an engineering perspective.