When it comes to software development, the academic and corporate worlds are drifting further and further apart. This is an observation made by the IT service provider adesso, which has gained comprehensive practical experience in numerous corporate development projects and also has close ties to universities and research institutions. This is why adesso has formulated its “Future Trends of Software Engineering”, aiming to provide a better joint understanding of the central issues once again. In ten propositions about the future of software development, the IT service provider is creating a synthesis between theoretical positions in research and the requirements of practice.
Prof Volker Gruhn is the founder of adesso AG and Chairperson of its Supervisory Board. He is also chair of software engineering at Duisburg-Essen University. He explains the idea using the example of “tamed agility”: “For those of us in research, agility isn’t a fundamental change. It just provides us with useful elements that should be integrated into our procedural models. However, during the implementation of adesso projects in practice, we are frequently observing the development of an IT of two speeds. Critical systems are still being developed traditionally and approached in a way that is anything but radical or agile. Agility in software development has a lot of potential that shouldn’t be wasted, but it needs to be tamed. This is why one of our propositions is: ‘Tamed agility is the silver bullet.’”
Overall, the range of topics covered by the ten propositions ranges from agile development to microservices and cognitive computing to cyber-physical systems. They illuminate every aspect from both the viewpoint of researchers and the perspective of practitioners. “We are convinced that this work we are doing on the threshold between research and practice will be interesting for many experts,” says Prof Gruhn. “This also became clear to us after the positive response we received at the adesso conference ‘The Essence of Software Engineering’, which took place in mid-November. There, 300 experts spent a day dedicated to discussing dialogue between universities and companies.”
You will find adesso’s comprehensive propositions about the future of software development at: https://www.adesso.de/future.
