This paper describes the uses of software engineering standards in a university curriculum. The paper points out the importance of software engineering standards, the issues relating to their use in software engineering and computer science courses, and which of these courses would benefit from using these standards. This information is documented in a new textbook, the IEEE software engineering standards: a students' version published by the IEEE Computer Society Press in 2007. This textbook lists the standards necessary to support the software engineering laboratory and other software courses. The book also provides a detailed description of each of these listed standards that have been tailored to match the requirements of a university course in software development. These tailored standards are based on the "look and feel" of as well as the structure of the IEEE's commercial software engineering standards. In addition, the book is "salted" with stories from both software development work places and the university classroom, both of which provide illustrations relating to some of the problems in developing software, and in some cases solutions to these problems.

Software engineering project management (SEPM) has been the focus of much recent attention because of the enormous penalties incurred during software development and maintenance resulting from poor management. To date there has been no comprehensive study performed to determine the most significant problems of SEPM, their relative importance, or the research directions necessary to solve them. We conducted a major survey of individuals from all areas of the computer field to determine the general consensus on SEPM problems. Twenty hypothesized problems were submitted to several hundred individuals for their opinions. The 294 respondents validated most of these propositions. None of the propositions was rejected by the respondents as unimportant. A number of research directions were indicated by the respondents which, if followed, the respondents believed would lead to solutions for these problems.