Licensing of
Software Engineers in
By Ken Adams, CDP
Region 5 President
A couple of
years ago I wrote an article for Information Executive about the State
of
ACM and
IEEE spent a great deal of time and effort developing SWEBOK, but without much
success. ACM has since withdrawn from
this effort, stating it could not support this effort to license software
engineers. ACM’s position is that our
state of knowledge and practice in software engineering is too immature to
warrant licensing. ACM feels licensing would be ineffective in providing
assurances about software quality and reliability.
To review
the ACM Position on Software Engineering as a Licensed Engineering Profession,
see www.acm.org/serving/se_policy/selep_main.html. I also recommend reading the appendix to
their position titled ‘An Assessment of Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge
Efforts’.
The major
problem I saw in the
I sent an
email to the Professional Engineering Board of Texas to inquire about the
status of licensing Software Engineers.
I asked if a test had been developed and if they had licensed any
software engineers. In their reply they
informed me that the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and
Surveying (NCEES) has recreated the Electrical Engineering examination to
accommodate computer subjects. You may view the exam specifications at www.ncees.org.
The Texas
Professional Engineering Board also informed me that there are now Professional
Engineers with specialties in Software Engineering. Some were licensed by exam
and some were licensed by examination waiver (the candidate must have 12 or 16
years of engineering experience with a minimum of a BS degree in engineering or
related science degree to request exam waivers).
I reviewed
the exam specifications. There are two
parts to the exam. The first part is a
breadth exam, which is for an Electrical Engineer. It is totally about electricity. The second part, which is for a computer
specialist, is primarily about computer hardware. The categories are as follows:
General
Computer Standards 10%
Hardware 45%
Software 35%
Networks 10%.
I strongly
recommend all AITP members that are in the business of creating software take
the time to read the ACM positions. I
also strongly recommend that AITP work closely with ACM and encourage ACM to
look closely at the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals
(ICCP) and what they have accomplished in building a body of knowledge for the
certification of IT Professionals. For
more information about ICCP visit www.iccp.org.
One final recommendation has to do
with the title ‘Software Engineer’. If
you call yourself a ‘Software Engineer, the professional engineers feel you come
under their auspices. Here is a
definition of a software engineer that I got from the Internet:
A software engineer is a licensed professional engineer who
is schooled and skilled in the application of engineering discipline to the
creation of software. A software engineer is often confused with a programmer,
but the two are vastly different disciplines.
While a programmer creates the codes that make a program
run, a software engineer creates the designs the programmer implements. By law
no person may use the title "engineer" (of any type) unless the
person holds a professional engineering license from a state licensing board
and are in good standing. A software engineer is also held accountable to a
specific code of ethics.
(Many thanks go out to Jerry G. Nordby, P.E. Technical
Director for Defense Programs, for providing this updated definition)
I recommend
that we do away with the title of ‘Software Engineer.’ Renaming software engineers would help
differentiate IT Professionals from the Professional Engineering
disciplines.
Information Executive Jul/Aug 2003
Copyright ©2003 Association of
Information Technology Professionals