Software Engineering as a Profession

In November 2008, I talked to a group of my colleagues with Software Testing background about making Software Testing a Profession – how a tester can become a Test Professional. My motivation for that discussion was due to the fact that most of the software testers, particularly in Indian IT scenario, are skilled in finding bugs in software systems and not much skilled in improving overall software quality. While less or no defects greatly contribute to the overall quality of the system but there are lot more attributes to define quality of a software systems. I feel this is primarily because of our “Skill Building” centric focus – rather than have a concerted focus on Knowledge, Processes and Skill we are focus on enhancing skills. However, no one knows how long we will keep chasing "skills". In the similar line yesterday I found an interesting news from IEEE Computer Society about making Software Engineering as a Profession. It says "Since computer engineering is at least a century younger than electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering, Burgess said it’s not surprising that the five computing disciplines—computer science, information systems, software engineering, computer engineering, and information technology—all still have a skills focus." While it is understandable from an organization's perspective but it's difficult to understand why our academia also follows the same path.

I will keep this subject alive in my mind but for now let me go ...