SE381-02 (Week 1, lecture 2)
Ethical and professional responsibility of an SE
What does this mean to you?
[Comments from section 1]
Don't put out inferior work
Don't want to be associated with bad SW
Represent your organization
Don't want your team to look foolish
Bad SW can be dangerous/expensive
Cause injury/expense not good for team or for ethics
[Comments from section 2]
Don't crash the airplane!
Respect copyrights on materials you use
Know what you don't know!
Profession = adequate knowledge/training
What's different about us?
We have special knowledge/expertise
Society and other people depend on us
Does this give us a special responsibility?
Impact of software failure
Some stories
Taken from Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks
Also see the "risks" archive and forums
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/neumann.html
Usenet: comp.risks
ACM SEN (Software Engineering Notes)
Therac-25 (C-RR, pg. 68)
Well-known case of software failure (1985-1987)
Radiation therapy machine
Two modes of operation (direct radiation, indirect)
Software replaced hardware interlocks
User-interface defects permitted unsafe combinations
Hardware interlocks had been replaced by software
More than software failure
Operators ignored/minimized patient complaints
Excessive faith in computer-based systems
Result
At least three deaths
Numerous injuries and complications
AT&T long distance switching system (pg. 14)
Daylight saving time (pg. 89)
Patriot clock drift (pg. 34)
Introduction to research paper
Content
Identify a system failure related to poor/incomplete software specification or verification . . .
That caused bodily harm, property damage, or other significant negative effect
Describe
The system
How it failed
Harm caused
Why software specification/verification was a likely cause and . . .
how it could have been done better
Analysis of professional responsibility
Include complete citations of references . . .
at least one from a professional journal or conference
(Check with the instructor if you are not sure what is OK.)
See assignment page for more details
Format
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering journal paper
LaTeX
LaTeX "style" file and skeleton document on web pages