Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
2010
Abstract
Every industry strives to be called a "profession", and software engineering is no exception. This paper attempts to define "profession" from three different perspectives and provides a chronological narration of the professionalization efforts of major IT bodies such as the IEEE Computer Society, Association of Computing Machinery and British Computer Society to promote software engineering from "occupation" to "profession". The outcome of this professionalization process is then examined against the three vastly different definitions of "profession" to qualitatively gauge the success of the professionalization process.
Keywords
Software engineering profession, software professional, professionalism, professionalization of the software industry, licensing of software engineers
Discipline
Computer Sciences | Software Engineering
Publication
International Journal of Information Technology
Volume
16
Issue
1
First Page
61
Last Page
75
Publisher
Singapore Computer Society
City or Country
Singapore
Embargo Period
6-29-2011
Citation
Mok, H. N. (2010). A Review of the Professionalization of the Software Industry: Has it made Software Engineering a Real Profession?. International Journal of Information Technology, 16 (1): 61-75.
Copyright Owner and License
Singapore Computer Society
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
http://www.intjit.org/cms/journal/volume/16/1/161_5.pdf