Software Engineering Notes
Professional and ethical responsibility
*Software engineering involves wider responsibilities than simply the application of technical skills
*Software engineers must behave in an honest and ethically responsible way if they are to be respected as professionals
*Ethical behaviour is more than simply upholding the law.
Issues of professional responsibility
l Confidentiality
• Engineers should normally respect the confidentiality of their employers or clients irrespective of whether or not a formal confidentiality agreement has been signed.
l Competence
• Engineers should not misrepresent their level of competence.
They should not knowingly accept work which is out with their competence.
l Intellectual property rights
• Engineers should be aware of local laws governing the use of intellectual property such as patents, copyright, etc. They should be careful to ensure that the intellectual property of employers and clients is protected.
l Computer misuse
• Software engineers should not use their technical skills to misuse other people’s computers. Computer misuse ranges from relatively trivial (game playing on an employer’s machine, say) to extremely serious (dissemination of viruses).
ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics l The professional societies in the US have cooperated to produce a code of ethical practice.
l Members of these organizations sign up to the code of practice when they join.
l The Code contains eight Principles related to the behavior of and decisions made by professional software engineers, including practitioners, educators, managers, supervisors and policy makers, as well as trainees and students of the profession.
Code of ethics - preamble l Preamble
• The short version of the code summarizes aspirations at a high level of the abstraction; the clauses that are included in the full version give examples and details of how these aspirations change the way we act as software engineering professionals.
*Software engineering involves wider responsibilities than simply the application of technical skills
*Software engineers must behave in an honest and ethically responsible way if they are to be respected as professionals
*Ethical behaviour is more than simply upholding the law.
Issues of professional responsibility
l Confidentiality
• Engineers should normally respect the confidentiality of their employers or clients irrespective of whether or not a formal confidentiality agreement has been signed.
l Competence
• Engineers should not misrepresent their level of competence.
They should not knowingly accept work which is out with their competence.
l Intellectual property rights
• Engineers should be aware of local laws governing the use of intellectual property such as patents, copyright, etc. They should be careful to ensure that the intellectual property of employers and clients is protected.
l Computer misuse
• Software engineers should not use their technical skills to misuse other people’s computers. Computer misuse ranges from relatively trivial (game playing on an employer’s machine, say) to extremely serious (dissemination of viruses).
ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics l The professional societies in the US have cooperated to produce a code of ethical practice.
l Members of these organizations sign up to the code of practice when they join.
l The Code contains eight Principles related to the behavior of and decisions made by professional software engineers, including practitioners, educators, managers, supervisors and policy makers, as well as trainees and students of the profession.
Code of ethics - preamble l Preamble
• The short version of the code summarizes aspirations at a high level of the abstraction; the clauses that are included in the full version give examples and details of how these aspirations change the way we act as software engineering professionals.