Harmonization of software engineering and system engineering standards

Software is increasingly performing vital functions in systems such as consumer products, military, telecommunication, medical, and banking. However, software engineering and conventional engineering have not been integrated into a cohesive and concurrent system engineering. Consequently, software engineering is essentially developing on its own and does not fully participate in hardware/software tradeoff analyses and does not fully contribute to the system at its full potential. The article presents such system software relationship issues and presents some initial solutions that might be implemented to improve the situation.