Introduction

What is software engineering? Why is software engineering important? How is software engineering done? Well, software engineering impacts every industry and all aspects of life. One sector where software engineering has been revolutionary is the automobile industry. Software that has been written to automate the dashboard is being reinvented again and again to augment the driving experience with software solutions such as universal head-up displays for cars. These displays provide speed and navigation information at eye level and thus keep drivers from having to glance down at their dashboards while driving.

Software is ubiquitous nowadays, and its presence is changing traditional industries. For example, software is more important than ever before in automobiles, and automobile manufacturers are responding by investing more and more on its development. The development of digital health-care devices has similarly caused the health-care industry to invest in software development. Even customer support operations are changing by utilizing Generative AI (GenAI) software such as ChatGPT to answer questions about diseases and how they spread. As spending on software development increases, traditional companies become technology companies in which software and its development play important and most often crucial roles. Advances in embedded systems, communication technologies, machine learning, and intelligent autonomous solutions, such as autonomous cars, large language models (e.g., ChatGPT), and insulin pumps and other wearable health technologies, will further boost this trend across most industries.

Software engineering focuses on the design and development of software. As companies undergo digital transformations, software engineers must know and apply sound principles to the solutions they help create. They must collaborate with enterprise and solution architects and be familiar with software engineering life cycle processes to address the needs of the companies they work for and to use approaches, techniques, and tools to design and develop meaningful software.

As businesses evolve and technology changes, so do the expectations placed on a software engineer. For example, consider how an average automobile from forty years ago had little to no software engineering in its operation. In today’s automobile industry, software engineers are creating a variety of solutions that are incorporated throughout a vehicle. This ranges from the software running on interactive screens on dashboards that feature music systems and navigational aids to the software that allows for control of hands-free phone calling. As software engineering solutions in automobiles continue to evolve and be applied to all aspects of driving, they are paving the way toward self-driving, autonomous vehicles. Software engineers face many challenges because software engineering processes always need to be tailored to each project, and software engineers must be able to help understand, design, construct, and deploy software solutions that move that project forward. Thus, the process of developing software for an automobile that supports embedded features such as heads-up displays, lane departure systems, and even embedded solutions that alert the driver about mechanical issues such as low air pressure in tires would be quite different from that for a smartwatch that features applications that help users track their exercise and monitor their sleep patterns. While software engineers follow a process to derive the solutions they build, they must constantly adapt to handle issues and changes associated to the business environment they work within as well as refine the technology and approaches they use.

Software engineers also need to understand business requirements to ensure the software solutions they create are successful. This is made more difficult as requirements constantly change, or as people involved in a project have conflicting expectations. As anyone who has sent a text to a friend about dinner plans only to discover that it has been changed to be a discussion of “ducks” and other ornithological matters, even a seemingly straightforward requirement like “automatically correct misspelled words” has multiple interpretations. Furthermore, assessing whether the misbehavior of solutions results from broken code or a misunderstanding of requirements often leads to confusion and disagreements between the software engineers and their customers. To minimize such issues, it is important for software engineers to understand their role and to familiarize themselves with software engineering processes, the types of solutions and technologies that are available, and their applicability to a given project at a given time.

Consider a scenario in which a software engineer is working at a company called TechWorks. The engineering team they are part of is tasked with a project to add new software features to the dashboard of an upcoming electric automobile. Because the process of software engineering cannot (in general) be fully automated, software engineers face the challenge of having to determine the best software process, approaches, and tools to be used for the project. They must do so while collaborating with a number of people and facing changes in requirements, and they still have to deliver solutions on time and within budget. In the example of the automobile dashboard, the design and development of a new digital speedometer requires coordinated efforts from all the team members and their alignment with the same goals. Fortunately, as you will learn in this chapter, there are a variety of software frameworks and tools that the software engineering team can apply to a project to increase its chance of success.