The JCSE is offering a six session course on Software Engineering Principles and Methods. This course is an accredited Wits University Short Course targeted at a post-graduate or professional developer level.

Leading organisations apply contemporary approaches to delivering software more quickly, with higher quality and at competitive costs. These outcomes rely on the adoption of appropriate software engineering principles which result in bringing discipline and effective ways-of-working to teams – whether Agile or Plan-driven.

The course first focuses on the behaviour of a team under the influence of governance. An appropriate balance of governance encourages a team to display behaviour that is suitable to the situation, be it Agile or Plan-driven. Hence the term “Situational Software Engineering” (SSE).

The concept of SSE is then further explored by introducing Barry Boehm’s ICSM – Incremental Commitment Spiral Model. Against the background of SSE and ICSM we introduce Essence – a standard for software engineering – adopted by the OMG (Object Management Group – www.omg.org ) in 2014. (Other OMG-adopted standards include CORBA, UML and BPMN).

Essence is the primary result of the SEMAT initiative – Software Engineering Method and Theory – and is used to give further substance to situational approaches to software engineering.

Two core stages of the course then focus on the selection of practices of software engineering: first from the perspective of plan-driven, controlled quality, and then from an agile, crafted quality point of view. The course concludes by exploring the meaning of Technical Debt in the broader context of Situational Software Engineering.