Professor Rajlich publishes Software Engineering: The Current Practice

DETROIT (March 13, 2012) - Vaclav Rajlich, professor of computer science at the Wayne State University College of Engineering, has published his book Software Engineering: The Current Practice. The text will be used at Wayne State University in some sections of the Introduction to Software Engineering course.

Published by Chapman and Hall and CRC Press as part of their Innovations in Software Engineering and Software Development series, the 18-chapter book teaches students basic software engineering skills. It also helps practitioners refresh their knowledge and explore recent developments in the field, including software changes and iterative, or incremental, processes of software development.

"There has been a paradigm shift in software engineering in which both industry and a sizeable amount of researchers have adopted iterative software development," Rajlich says. "I believe this is the first textbook that presents this new situation."

The textbook is based on an undergraduate senior course in software engineering that Rajlich has taught for years. After a historical overview and an introduction to software technology and models, the book discusses the software change and its phases, including concept location, impact analysis, refactoring, actualization and verification. It covers the most common iterative processes: agile, directed and centralized processes. The text also journeys through the initial development of software from scratch to the final stages that lead toward software closedown.

Radu Vanciu, a computer science graduate student and Rajlich's teaching assistant, says students will undoubtedly benefit from the textbook, which reflects the professor's practical approach to teaching.

"The textbook is intended to teach students how to change code of realistic projects, rather than developing toy programs from scratch," Vanciu says. "I believe that the skills students learn in Rajlich's class help them while they are looking for a job."

Rajlich is an editorial board member of the Journal of Software Evolution and Process and the founder and a permanent steering committee member of the IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension. His research focuses on software evolution and comprehension.

Rajlich earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Case Western Reserve University in 1971.

###

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.