Relevance for Software Engineering

Because software engineering is an evolving field, its practioners still look for one framework that will be accepted by the entire community of software engineers . Such a situation characterizes every young discipline in its early steps. Sometimes, a similar process also happens to mature disciplines. For example, there are cases in which established fields change their core research topics. In some cases, because of the conceptual change, new research methods replace methods irrelevant for the new research topics.

As a software development practitioner, it is important to be aware of different approaches that your teammates may value. It is sufficient to consider, for example, how software development processes may be immediately affected when different team members express different approaches toward topics such as the customer s role in the development process. Naturally, such different perspectives may lead to conflicts between team members from the early stages of the development process, and consequently the process may suffer.

This chapter aims to increase software engineers awareness of the existence of different approaches to a variety of topics related to software engineering. It is further suggested that this awareness may sometimes be helpful in resolving conflicts among team members. In practice, it may guide to identify the source of the conflict and the team members different perspectives of the discussed topic. Based on this understanding, the team can examine ways to bridge the different approaches.