Software Engineering

Through systematic and measurable methods, we contribute to streamlining software development while ensuring high product quality. Our research is ranked second in the world and is internationally recognised for its combination of academic excellence and industrial relevance.

SERL Sweden - a leading research group

The SERL Sweden research group is one of Europe's foremost in empirical and evidence-based software engineering. We often work in close collaboration with industry to solve real-world challenges and strengthen companies' competitiveness in the development of software-intensive systems.

Broad research area with high relevance

Research in software engineering at BTH covers both technical solutions and business strategies. We integrate top-ranked academic research with strong links to industry needs.

Some of the areas we study are:

• Business aspects, ecosystems and innovation in software engineering
• Agile and lean software development
• Empirical and evidence-based software engineering
• Research methods
• Global software engineering
• Human aspects in software engineering
• Requirements management
• Software architectures, modeling and product lines
• Process improvement in software engineering
• Product management in software engineering
• Software quality
• Search-based methods in software engineering
• Verification and validation
• Value-based product development
• Subject-specific didactics

Research in software engineering is mainly conducted at the Department of Software Engineering.

Software - the lubricant of modern society

Modern society is dependent on computers and software, which has created enormous opportunities but also increased our vulnerability. Digitalisation means that more and more functions are controlled by software, from transport and industry to finance and entertainment.

Software is now a crucial component of, for example, airplanes, trains, cars, telecommunication systems, mobiles, industrial automation, banks, media streaming services, payment services and administrative systems such as payroll and ticketing.

An example of this dependency is that some modern cars contain 100 million lines of code. To put this in perspective, a 300-page book with 40 lines per page contains around 12,000 lines of text. This means that the code in a car is equivalent to around 8,300 books, which would require enormous collaboration to keep the story coherent. Similarly, software development has to deal with complex systems where thousands of developers work in parallel, often in different countries, and where each new feature has to be integrated without disrupting existing services.

Software engineering - more than just programming

Developing software is about much more than coding. Creating large and complex software systems requires:

• Software architecture - structure and design of the system.
• Requirements management - understanding and defining what the software should do.
• Design and testing - ensuring functionality and quality.
• Management and processes - managing development projects with many stakeholders.

As software systems are continuously developed and improved over many years, there is a high demand for knowledge of the existing system. It must be possible to add new services without affecting or disrupting existing functions.

The aim is for the software to be of high quality, secure and cost-effective, while delivering the services users need. However, as software development is a design process, it is almost impossible to create completely flawless systems. The combination of society's dependence on software and the challenges arising from its development makes the area a critical issue for society.

BTH - a leader in software engineering

BTH has one of Sweden's largest and strongest research and education environments in software development and is internationally recognised in the field. Research and teaching are conducted with the vision:

"Leading Software Engineering"