Ian Sommerville, born in 1951 in Manchester, UK, is a renowned computer scientist and software engineer. He is known for his significant contributions to the field of software engineering, particularly in education and research. Sommerville has held academic positions at several prestigious universities and is highly regarded for his work on software development processes and methodologies.
One of the earliest student textbooks on the (then) emerging field of software engineering. It presents a view of software engineering as practised in the early 1980s, and is oriented around the notion of the software life cycle - requirements, design, implementation, testing and evolution. Rapidly superceded by later editions because the discipline was changing so quickly at that time.
El libro cubre un amplio espectro de procesos de software, desde la obtención inicial de requerimientos, pasando por el diseño y desarrollo, hasta la evolución del sistema.
Los programas de ejemplos ahora están en Java y los modelos gráficos de sistemas se describen en el estándar UML.
Se concentra en técnicas ampliamente utilizadas para desarrollar sistemas de software a gran escala.
La página web del libro incluye vínculos al material que permite la utilización del libro en la enseñanza y en el estudio individual, transparencias, código fuente de los programas de ejemplo y material adicional sobre CASE y especificación formal.