The Project to produce a Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) was begun in 1998 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It is intended to produce a Guide document into Core Body of Knowledge in Software Engineering that can serve the purposes of identifying core skills and knowledge competencies that can be used in both licensing of Software Engineers and in designing curricula in Software Engineering educational programs. This SWEBOK is a baseline general competency upon which to build particular competencies in specialized areas such as healthcare. In fact programs are now beginning which educate not only software engineers in healthcare and biomedicine concepts but also health informaticians in the Life Cycle Principles underpinning Software Engineering. In the SWEBOK Project proposal the following 10 Knowledge Areas have been identified:
· Software Requirements Analysis
· Software Design
· Software Construction
· Software Testing
· Software Configuration Management
· Software Engineering Infrastructure
· Software Engineering Management
· Software Engineering Process
· Software Maintenance
· Software Quality Analysis
The draft Guide to Software Engineering Body of Knowledge is found at (http://computer.org/tab/swecc.htm). The first printed version has been released by IEEE (see http://computer.org/cspress/)/); a public comment period in June 2003 has preceded a revised edition expected in December 2003. In addition to the 10 core Knowledge Areas there are 135 related Discipline Knowledge Areas and these too are listed at the SWEBOK Site. For the EHR viewer, the significance of this effort for healthcare lies in the fact that the quality EHR architectural components for a Healthcare Enterprise will most effectively and economically be built by activities who utilize the Life Cycle principles of the SWEBOK within their organization. The use of such principles will not constrain creativity but, rather, will be a major aid in preventing the major mistakes that have occurred over the past forty years of developing EHR systems for all healthcare settings. In the near future, healthcare professional disciplines and organizations will collaborate with those in the information systems engineering field in order to exchange expertise and perspectives. Further discussions of the interpretations of the general software engineering with respect to healthcare are found in the HIBOK segment of this web folder. The following statement of the SWEBOK Objectives and Audience has been extracted from that project’s “Stoneman” version Plan:
The Industrial Advisory Board agreed in Mont-Tremblant that the objectives of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge project are to:
· Characterize the contents of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge;
· Provide topical access to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge;
· Promote a consistent view of software engineering worldwide;
· Clarify the place of, and set the boundary of, software engineering with respect to these disciplines such as computer science, project management, computer engineering and mathematics;
· Provide a foundation for curriculum development and individual certification and licensing material.”
The Industrial Advisory Board agreed in Mont-Tremblant that the intended audience for the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge includes:
· Public and private organizations wishing to use and promote a consistent view of software engineering internally, notably when defining education and training, job classification and performance evaluation policies;
· Practicing software engineers;
· Makers of public policy engaged in defining software engineering licensing rules and guidelines to professionals;
· Software engineering students learning the discipline;
· Educators and trainers engaged in defining curricula and course content.”