THE PRACTICALITY OF ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

In the early days of computing, software development was all about automating complex scientific calculations requiring several iterations. But with advances in technology resulting in the drastic reduction in the cost of computers, computer programs were designed to automate enterprise activities that required storing large data and developing complex codes to process the same. Unlike the structured scientific problems that computers solved earlier, the application of computers in automating enterprise activities involved problems that were not as structured as in the sciences. The users of enterprise applications were also not technically skilled as scientists. This increased the complexity of software development projects. The complexity associated with software development increased to a level that necessitated the adoption of principles that have been applied in the traditional engineering fields to solve complex problems such as building skyscrapers, highways, electrically wiring a large building among others. Previous studies have documented and categorized the engineering principles that apply to software engineering. This paper goes a step further to illustrate the practical applications of these principles to the software development process using design methodologies. In this way, the study also closes the knowledge gap as to why the name software engineering.