Summary of Workshops on Integrating Systems and Software Engineering Conducted at University of Southern California on 30 October 2007

Management and Personnel: Three primary management issues seem to best capture many of the detailed issues discussed during the management workshop: 1) key acquisition personnel do not understand how important software engineering and software technology are in making critical decisions throughout the entire acquisition lifecycle; 2) throughout the entire acquisition lifecycle, critical decisions are made by key acquisition personnel who lack the necessary competencies in software engineering and software technology; and 3) too few software engineers have an adequate combination of systems engineering background, domain expertise, and physical sciences understanding to effectively participate in integrated systems and software decision processes.
Some of the workshop attendees related observations where some of the most successful software-intensive system development projects had key individuals that, while they were primarily systems or software engineers, they had a good grounding in both disciplines. It was also pointed out that these individuals are rare and that efforts are needed to encourage this “crossover” between the two disciplines.