Maturation of Engineering Disciplines

Disasters in older engineering fields have precipitated the professionalization of engineering practices in those fields. Of course, full-fledged engineering disciplines can't simply be willed into existence overnight. Mary Shaw at Carnegie Mellon University has identified a progression that fields go through before they reach the level of professional engineering. Figure 17-3 summarizes this maturation.

Figure 17-3. The progression of a discipline from craft to professional engineering.

Source: Adapted from "Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software"[8]

graphics/17fig03.gif

In the craft stage, good work is performed by talented amateurs. Craftsmen use intuition and brute force to create their widgets, whether their widgets are bridges, electric equipment, or computer programs. Some of their work is intended for sale to the public, but most is created solely for their own use. They have little or no concept of large-scale production for external sale. Craftsmen tend to make extravagant use of available materials. The field progresses haphazardly; there's no systematic way to educate or train other craftsmen in the use of the most effective techniques.

Civil engineering (aqueduct and bridge construction) in first century Rome was a discipline in its craft stage, as was early computing in the 1950s and 1960s. Many software projects today still make extravagant use of available materials (staff time) and operate at the craft level.

At some point, the demand for the widgets increases beyond what isolated craftsmen can provide, and demand for greater production begins to influence the discipline. As the folklore becomes better understood, it's codified into written heuristics and procedural rules.

In the commercial stage, workers more carefully define the resources needed to support production. The stage is marked by a stronger economic orientation, and cost of goods may become an issue. Practitioners are trained to ensure consistent quality of the widgets they produce. Production procedures are systematically refined by changing different parameters to see what works and what doesn't.

The Reims Cathedral was built at a time when civil engineering was in its commercial stage. In software, many commercial-stage organizations achieve respectable levels of quality and productivity by making use of carefully selected, well-trained personnel. They rely on familiar practices and change them incrementally in pursuit of better products and better project performance.

Some of the problems encountered by commercial production can't be solved via trial and error, and, if the economic stakes are high enough, a corresponding science will develop. As the science matures, it develops theories that contribute to commercial practice, and this is the point at which the field reaches the professional engineering stage. At this point, progress arises from application of scientific principles as well as from practical experimentation. The practitioners working in the field at that point must be well-educated in both the theory and practice of their profession.



Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
Professional Software Development(c) Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, [... ]reers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 164

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