Developing high-quality software requires skilled software professionals equipped with a set of basic and essential software engineering competencies (SEC). These competencies and the satisfaction levels derived from them change over a project's lifecycle, or as software professionals move from one project to another. Previous studies suggest a lack of means enabling SEC stakeholders to identify and assess competencies suitable for different projects. Additionally, previous research has mainly portrayed SEC to be static and overlooked their evolution over time and across projects. We investigate how we could effectively identify and match the competencies of software professionals necessary for different projects. We follow a mixed-method approach to iteratively develop and evaluate a framework for identifying and managing SEC. In so doing, we use the results of an extensive literature review, focus group discussions with experts from academia and industry, and data collected through interviews with 138 individuals with a supervisory role in the software industry. Drawing on the Kano model and Competency Framework for Software Engineers, we propose a Unified Competence Gate for Software Professionals (UComGSP), a framework for identifying and managing SEC. The UComGSP consists of 62 hard competencies, 63 soft competencies, and 25 essential SEC competencies. Additionally, we propose three stakeholders’ satisfaction levels for SEC assessment: basic, performance, and delighter. Furthermore, based on empirical observation, we report 27 competencies not mentioned in the reviewed literature; 11 of them are considered essential competencies. Competence development involves different stakeholders, including software professionals, educators, and the software industry. The UComGSP framework enables SEC stakeholders to (i) identify SE competencies, (ii) identify the essential SEC, and (iii) assess the satisfaction levels that can be derived from different competencies. Future research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework across software development projects.

Considering the critical role of software in modern societies, we face an urgent need to educate more competent software professionals. Software engineering competencies (SEC) are considered the backbone of successfully developing software products. Consequently, SEC has become a hotspot for software engineering research and practice. Although scientific literature on SEC is not lacking, to our knowledge, a comprehensive overview of the current state of SEC research is missing. To that end, we conducted an extensive and systematic review of the SEC literature. We provide an overview of the current state of research on SEC, with a particular focus on common SEC research areas. In addition to reporting the available SEC models and frameworks, we compile a list of 49 unique essential competencies of software professionals. Finally, we highlight several gaps in the literature that deserve further research. In particular, we call for a better understanding of how the essential competencies of software professionals change over time, as well as fresh accounts of the essential competencies of software professionals. Additionally, considering recent shifts toward Agile and DevOps methods, future research must explore the competencies required for developing software products in modern development environments.

This Full Research Paper presents enterprise architecture (EA) modeling tools utilized in an educational context. EA is a well-known and a commonly used approach for organizational development aiming to improve the alignment of business operations and information technology. This high level design of information technology (IT) driven business operations lays the foundations on lower level technical activities such as the design and implementation of application programs and features, system boundary interfaces, database distribution and data pipes, and system recovery. Organizations' architectures are made visible by creating EA artefacts, such as business process diagrams, data models and development roadmaps for the betterment of a holistic understanding and future planning of organizational IT solutions. It follows that IT students as future IT professionals need to understand the high level organizational IT landscape in order to understand, for example, software interface design, feature prioritization, and the evaluation of suitable technologies. Although EA is one of the core competency areas of the academic information systems graduate curriculum, the means of teaching EA are seldom discussed, and studies specifically focusing on modeling EA are lacking. In this paper, we report our experiences on teaching a practical course on EA, and our findings based on data collected from students who took the course. By discussing our findings in relation to a widely acknowledged competency model for graduate degree programs in information systems as well as prior research, we conclude that it is possible to effectively teach the modeling of some of the most essential EA artefacts with different tools. Perhaps most importantly, our findings show that modeling tools that are strict in EA standard conformance are perceived easier to learn and use by students, than merely illustrative tools with lenient or nonexistent conformance checks.

This paper describes the first experiences in development and usage of an environment to support a community in collaborative modeling efforts in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). With first priority, the domain of interest, the sub-domains and the relationships have to be modeled to have a common understanding and a shared model for the further work and exchange. While the work continues, the model, and the sub-domain models continue to evolve. The tool that is presented here supports the modeling, especially the discourse conducted on the models in the collaborating network. With the tool i) the model rationale can be made transparent, ii) reasoning and agreements on changes in the model or its elements are systematically recorded by issue iii) the semantic wiki functionalities enhance the analysis of the discussion and discussion tracks. With the help of the tool, the community has continuously an updated model version at hand. Community members can raise an issue whenever a change or enhancement in the model is seen necessary. The members can share their updated sub-domain models and model variants for discussion. The tool is called Discourse Tool, since a discursive process is induced for negotiating and decision making on the model issues.