Thoughts on Teaching Software Quality Engineering.pdf

Thoughts on Teaching Software Quality Engineering Witold Suryn Department of Electrical Engineering école de Technologie Supérieure Montréal, Canada wsuryn@ele.etsmtl.ca ABSTRACT The article presents an overview of the subject of Software Quality Engineering (SQE) education. Four different perspectives are taken into account: why to teach SQE, how the subject is being taught today, what support teachers have to teach SQE and how could the Software Quality engineer be educated. The latest trends in methods and tools pertinent to the domain are also presented. 1. Introduction Quality becomes a critical attribute of a software product since its absence results in dissatisfied users, loss of money, and – in the most critical situation – in lost lives. Increasing recognition of the importance of software quality makes the software engineering “center of gravity” shift from creating a technology solution toward a quality solution. Development organizations confronted with such an approach are, in general, not prepared to deal with it since their engineers too often are not adequately educated. And if such knowledge exists, it is still more of an empirical nature than resulting from a formal educational process. This reality makes the role played by Software Quality Engineering (SQE) education to change – or sometimes “about to change” - from “Cinderella” to a full member of Software Engineering Education family. This paper presents a quick look at today’s situation in Software Quality Engineering education from four different points of view: why should SQE be taught, how is SQE being taught, what has an SQE teacher for his disposition and what and how could the future SQE engineer be educated. This paper has no ambition to cover the subject to its fullest extent, seeking rather a wide reaction from the community of academic teachers and researchers. 2. Why should Software Quality Engineering be taught Applying a simp