Ethical Software: Integrating Code of Ethics into Software Development Life Cycle

Abstract

Software engineering code of ethics (SWECOE) is an area within software engineering that requires increasing research attention. SWECOE is acknowledged as an important area of practice that has a huge impact on how software affects our daily life. The degree of harm to the users as a result of using equipment with faulty software applications highly depends on the ability of software engineers to follow the good practices in software engineering. The review of the literature has indicated that, there has not been much research that focuses on how SWECOE is being practiced effectively, and whether there is any effective framework that practitioners have followed in the development process. This paper provides a review of existing work in the area of software engineering and the practice code of ethics. The purpose is to seek a mean for filling in the gap in research in this area concerning the actual use of SWECOE in the practice of software development. This paper also provides a preliminary framework to suggest means for research and practicing ethics within the actual practice in software engineering through Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The findings indicate that, despite a good number of research on SWECOE, the fact is code of ethics is rather difficult and complicated to implement in the actual work environment. A framework is suggested for research and for practices in the software engineering field.