Construx Knowledge Areas

The core of our professional development program is a Professional Development Ladder (PDL), which is based upon the SWEBOK knowledge areas described in Chapter 5. We call these knowledge areas Construx Knowledge Areas (CKAs). The CKAs define the body of knowledge that technical employees should understand and be able to apply. As described in Chapter 5, there are ten knowledge areas:

• Software Requirements

• Software Design

• Software Construction

• Software Testing

• Software Maintenance

• Software Configuration Management

• Software Quality

• Software Engineering Management

• Software Engineering Tools and Methods

• Software Engineering Process

Although the SWEBOK defines each of these knowledge areas in detail, we found that we needed to define specific interpretations of each knowledge area for our own use. Our specific interpretations are described in Table 16-1.

Table 16-1. Description of Construx Knowledge Areas (CKAs)

CKA	DESCRIPTION
Requirements	The discovery, analysis, modeling, and documentation of the functions to be implemented in software.
Design	The bridge between Requirements and Construction, Design defines the structure and dynamic state of the system at many levels of abstraction and through many views.
Construction	The creation of software according to a specified design. The primary activity is creating code and configuration data to implement functionality using the selected languages, technologies, and environments.
Testing	Activities associated with executing software to detect defects and evaluate features.
Maintenance	Activities related to system installation, deployment, migration, and operation.
Configuration Management	The discipline of defining how project artifacts are organized and stored, how changes to those artifacts are controlled and managed, and how the system is released to the customer.
Quality	Activities performed on static artifacts associated with providing confidence that a software item conforms or will conform to technical requirements.
Engineering Management	All aspects of management ranging from business and personnel management issues to project management issues.
Engineering Tools and Methods	The use of tools, technology, methodologies, and techniques for software engineering.
Process	Activities related to measuring and improving software development quality, timeliness, efficiency, productivity, and other project and product characteristics.