FOCUS: An adaptation of a SWEBOK-based curriculum for industry requirements

Siemens Corporate Development Center India (CT DC IN) develops software applications for the industry, energy, health-care, and infrastructure & cities sectors of Siemens. These applications are typically critical in nature and require software practitioners who have considerable competency in the area of software engineering. To enhance the competency of engineers, CT DC IN has introduced an internal curriculum titled “FOundation CUrriculum for Software engineers” (FOCUS) which is an adapted version of IEEE's SWEBOK curriculum. The FOCUS program has been used to train more than 500 engineers in the last three years. In this experience report, we describe the motivation for FOCUS, how it was structured to address the specific needs of CT DC IN, and how the FOCUS program was rolled out within the organization. We also provide results obtained from a survey of the FOCUS participants, their managers, and FOCUS trainers that was conducted to throw light on the effectiveness of the program. We believe the insights from the survey results provide useful pointers to other organizations and academic institutions that are planning to adopt a SWEBOK-based curriculum.