From: saradhi@iti.gov.sg (Motamarri Saradhi)
Subject: Software Engineering 
Keywords: Software, Engineering, Analysis, Design
Reply-To: saradhi@iti.gov.sg
Organization: Information Technology Institute, National Computer Board, S'pore
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 10:02:45 GMT

Dear colleagues,
There has been a number of postings on "What Is Soft Engg".

Engineering is a robust discipline and has certain characteristics. Most
of the engineering principles have been thoroughly tested, practically
proven to be so. And the foremost point is a perfect engineer accepts 
lessons from practice. He visualizes what's likely to happen in case
he selects a particular analysis or design decision over others.

Many of you may surprise to know that a good engineer may not be able
distinctly feel the difference or rather, he will not be able to isolate
the acts of analysis and design.

There are a couple of reasons for this:
   
   An engineers's task is not over by just saying do this, this, that...
   blah... blah. He has to prove by analytical means that the design he
   contemplating is accurate, meats the requirements, safe under the
   anticipated conditions, respects the "restraints" he has adopted in
   the process.

    How is he going to ascertain? That's where again he has to repeat
    analysis - i.e., "design evaluation" is nothing but "analysis".

I am not saying these things out of theoretical interests, but from 
practice. I am a civil and transportation engineer by qualifications, 
and a "Systems Developer" by profession. I have adopted these realisations
in my systems development projects and achieved substantial success in
all the systems delivered. In one particular application system "Loan 
Processing and Loan Monitoring System"developed for a Thrift and Credit 
Cooperative Society, I had to adopt quite a radical approach to make
it successful. I adopted a development-cum-deployment strategy, implying
a "programwise-deployment" for live-use. It's operational for the past
two years - and no maintenance calls!!!

If any of you are interested can contact, Secretary, APSRTC ET & CCS
Ltd, Azamabad, Hyderabad, India about the success story.

I have been attempting to bring forward the conceptual ideas behind
these works in the form of technical papers. A few of them already
appeared in the ACM-Software Engineering Notes. The critical one, I am
planning for a wider readership has undergone several revisions -
and it hasn't seen publication - bounced back to me! Hopefully,
I will revise again to bring it to light...

If any of you really interested in knowing what's engineering analysis 
and design means, what we can learn from the discipline of Civil Engg,
please refer to my article on "Systems Modelling and Description" in
whcih I have provided an appendix briefly describing the engineering 
process of problem solving.

I wish that it's already long, I stop here...
Anticipating a review of these views (of course, they are exclusively
personal)....

M Saradhi

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