SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DESIGN METHODOLOGIES AND GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY

Abstract

The relation between Software Engineering and General Systems Theory is explored. They are found to be dual meta-disciplines which need each other. It is discovered that there is a simple connection between the background variables of Klir's GSPS and Software Design Methodological Viewpoints. This connection motivates a look al the ontological assumptions underlying the two meta-disciplines which underlies the epistemological framework of GSPS. That framework is used to attempt to understand the nature of the different manifestations of software. This leads to an in depth look at the essence of software which in turn leads to the extension of the epistemological lattice of GSPS. The article shows the complex ways in which Software Engineering Methods and General Systems Theory intertwine al the ontological and epistemological levels which causes us to understand both differently than we would have understood them separately. The point of the article is to show how these two meta-disciplines need and intimately involve each other at a fundamental level and in fact co-arise from each other in spite of the fact that one is extremely general and the other extremely concrete. The object is to establish a basis for software engineers and general systems theoriests to learn from each other based on a common framework for understanding Software Systems

INDEX TERMS:

• Software engineering
• systems theory
• software design methodologies
• GSPS
• epistemological framework
• autopoiesis
• ontology
• magician systems
• reflexisve systems