degree, comparable in standard to a Ph.D. in computer science or engineering. Students get an engineering doctorate, or EngD, in LSCITS, 20 with the following key differences between EngD and Ph.D.:

Industrial problems. Students must work on and spend significant time on an industrial problem. Universities cannot simply replicate the complexity of modern software-intensive systems, with few faculty members having experience and understanding of the systems;

Range of courses. Students must take a range of courses focusing on complexity and systems engineering (such as for LSCITS, socio-technical systems, high-integrity systems engineering, empirical methods, and technology innovation); and

Portfolio of work. Students do not have to deliver a conventional thesis, a book on a single topic, but can deliver a portfolio of work around their selected area; it is a better reflection of work in industry and makes it easier for the topic to evolve as systems change and new research emerges.

However, graduating a few advanced doctoral students is not enough. Universities and industry must also create master’s courses that educate com-plex-systems engineers for the coming decades; our thoughts on what might be covered are outlined in Figure 2. The courses must be multidisciplinary, combining engineering and business disciplines. It is not only the knowledge the disciplines bring that is important but also that students be sensitized to the perspectives of a variety of disciplines and so move beyond the silo of single-discipline thinking.

Conclusion

Since the emergence of widespread networking in the 1990s, all societies have grown increasingly dependent on complex software-intensive systems, with failure having profound social and economic consequences. Industrial organizations and government agencies alike build these systems without understanding how to analyze their behavior and without appropriate engineering principles to support their construction.

The SEI ULSS report14 argued that
current engineering methods are inad-
equate, saying: “For 40 years, we have
embraced the traditional engineering
perspective. The basic premise under-
lying the research agenda presented in
this document is that beyond certain
complexity thresholds, a traditional
centralized engineering perspective is
no longer adequate nor can it be the
primary means by which ultra-complex
systems are made real.” A key contri-
bution of our work in LSCITS is articu-
lating the fundamental reasons this
assertion is true. By examining how en-
gineering has a basis in the philosophi-
cal notion of reductionism and how
reductionism breaks down in the face
of complexity, it is inevitable that tradi-
tional software-engineering methods
will fail when used to develop LSCITS.
Current software engineering is simply
not good enough. We need to think dif-
ferently to address the urgent need for
new engineering approaches to help
construct large-scale complex coali-
tions of systems we can trust.

acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleagues Gordon Baxter and John Rooksby of St. Andrews University in Scotland and Hillary Sillitto of Thales Land & Joint Systems U.K. for their constructive comments on drafts of this article. The work report here was partially funded by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (www.epsrc. ac.uk) grant EP/F001096/1.

 

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Ian Sommerville ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the school of Computer science, st. andrews university, scotland. Dave Cliff ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the department of Computer science, bristol university, england. Radu Calinescu ( [e-mail]) is a lecturer in the department of Computer science, aston university, england. Justin Keen ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the school of health informatics, leeds university, england. Tim Kelly ( [e-mail]) is a senior lecturer in the department of Computer science, york university, england. Marta Kwiatkowska ( [e-mail]. uk) is a professor in the department of Computer science, oxford university england. John McDermid ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the department of Computer science, york university, england. Richard Paige ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the department of Computer science, york university, england.