n the 1950s, hardware vendors provided methodologies (and associated forms, manuals, etc.) to their customers.   Among the earliest such methods were the "Study Organization Plan (SOP)" from IBM and "Accurately Defined Systems (ADS): from NCR.  By the mid-sixties, numerous commentators had provided their suggestions for "what to do and how to create quality computer applications."  Within this mix of ideas and suggestions, most organizations lived with in-house development methodologies which resulted in poor quality, non-standard systems and applications.  By 1968, the "software development problem" had become so large that the NATO Science Committee sponsored a conference in Garmisch, Germany in October 1968 to examine the issue.

A second conference followed in Rome, Italy in October 1969.  These reports captured some of the prevailing ideas on how to make the process of the analysis and development of computer applications and their component computer programs more engineering-like.  The use of standardized parts, which could be re-used in other applications and assembled as modules in structured ways, was considered. 

Although numerous authors have focused their attention on software engineering as a process, little has been done to examine the history of software engineering as a movement.  In 1996, the International Conference and Research Center for Computer Science in Dagstuhl, Germany, sponsored a week-long meeting of software engineering practitioners, academic computer scientists, and computer historians. 

During the week, numerous papers, positions, and experiences were presented.  At the end of the week, a number of short reports were prepared by the various groups.  According to the "Historian's Report" the problem of identifying a history stems from the broad, undocumented, practice of software engineering, as well as other identified problems.  The Report suggested, however, that a history might be able to be engineered by the practitioners under the guidance of the historians, however, such a project, while eliciting great excitement, seemed unwieldy given the normal tools of the historian.

We have several documents relating the History of Software Engineering available. While we did prepare the NATO reports of 1968-1969, a refined version is available compliments of Brian Randell. In addition, we have prepared a scanned copy of the Dagsthul Report for anyone interested in reading more about this confeerence; however, a PostScript edition is available for viewing at the conference website. .