From: jcardow@afit.af.mil (James E. Cardow)
Subject: Re: Do Software Engineers Actualy Do So Badly?
Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 12:27:27 GMT

I've been following this thread off and on as the discussion has
progressed and have had a few other things come up that relate.  Maybe
it's time to redirect the train of thought.  

Last week I attended a conference on Software Engineering Education (a
good conference by the way), but found myself becoming increasingly
bothered by a common thread of discussion that went something like
"software engineering would be accepted as engineering if only ..."
Now, I've heard this before.  In fact, I've been sucked into this
argument before.  But this time I had to sit back and wonder, why are we
trying so hard to be accepted as an engineering field?  I'm not going to
argue the title, that is a waste of time.  But, consider a few points of
this thread and the arguments presented during the conference.

	- We have a past that is less than spectacular.  Having been in
	the government for 19 years I can believe the scale if not the
	accuracy of the GAO study.  As someone said, the cause does
	vary.  But there is sufficient evidence that performance is
	poor.

	- We have very little faith in our own field.  The basis for the
	thread in this news group is repeated very often.  We don't
	believe we do a very good job.

	- We have tried to improve our image by trying to be like a more
	(in our eyes) respected field, engineering.

	- As I believe Watts Humphrey said at the conference "software
	engineering is an aspiration, not an advocation"  

Now, there are many reasons for each of these, and as I've said, I've
fallen into the arguments often enough.  In fact I still do, but I try
to argue more on the lines of "why aren't we as responsible as
engineering" rather than "what we do looks like engineering because..."

On the plane ride home from the conference I read a book that a friend
in Ops Research was really hot on.  It was a management book, and it has
been a while since I opened one, but he really thought this was special,
so I thought it would kill some long hours.  The book is called "the
Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement" by Eliyahu Goldratt.  It is
written as a novel, about a factory about to close.  The bottom line is
the manager saves the factory (etc. etc).  But some things came up that
at first I though weren't related to software engineering.  The most
fundamental was a simple question related to the title, what is the
goal?  In this factory, the goal turns out to be the common sense answer
of making money, but when you look at how the goal had been approached,
it wasn't clear that anyone had the goal in mind.  I really can't convey
the message well here, but let me ask this.  

	What is the GOAL of software engineering?

The message of Humphrey is the process is the solution, but to what
goal?  I've gone back and looked, but I can't find it.

I know this is a long message, and I apologize for that.  If anyone is
interested in working through this question I would like to continue it
either by e-mail or a thread on this group.  Let me know.  In the
meantime, I'm going to try and find more.

Jim


	Jim Cardow, Capt, USAF
	Air Force Institute of Technology
	Instructor in Software Engineering
	Professional Continuing Education Program

		Phone: (513) 476-4500, DSN 986-4500
		E-mail:  jcardow@afit.af.mil
		Mail:	AFIT/LSS
			Wright Patterson AFB, OH 45433-6583