25 Years of Software Engineering in Brazil: An Analysis of SBES History

Abstract

The application of Software Engineering involves a systematic approach to the analysis, design, assessment, implementation, test, maintenance and reengineering of software. It first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference as means to overcome the software crisis. This study aims to investigate how the Software engineering area is evolving, by analyzing the 24 editions of Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES), and understanding which is the impact of international research in this event. A scoping study was performed to figure out how the SE area is evolving and if it suffers influences from international research. We found 512 studies over the 24 SBES editions, which were analyzed and discussed. Based on the analysis, we observed that in the first years there were a few empirical studies; most of them were of theoretical nature. The industry participation and interest still continuous over the editions. Regarding to international impact, we did not find any relation with international research. Our findings suggest that greater attention should be given to the Software Engineering area, with the aim to attract research from industry with real data, and also international collaboration.