Bringing System Engineers and Software Engineers Together

For system development projects, the proportion of the budget allocated to software development has been continually increasing in response to demand for system flexibility and maintainability. As a result, many technical organizations started by mechanical and electrical engineers now find themselves awash with software engineers. As system engineers see it, software people have different ways of working: They talk about objects, responsibilities, and services, and generally seem to think software is the only part of the system that matters. Conversely, software engineers think their system engineering counterparts have a split personality. Although system engineers talk about formal techniques for requirements traceability, design for safety, and so on, when it comes to talking about softwareýwell, often they'd rather not talk about software. The upshot is that software and system engineers don't communicate with each other very often, and even when they do, they are hampered by a lack of a common vocabulary.