The aim of the research is to develop and approve the methodology for the preparation and actualization of the work programs of the academic disciplines and practices of the basic vocational education program of higher education that meets the requirements of the federal state educational standard of higher education of 2017 on the basis of the elements of competences allocated from texts of professional and educational standards, subject area standards, scientific, methodological and other sources. The approach, recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation is the expression of the set of professional knowledge, skills necessary for the graduate in the formulations of several dozens of competences, presupposes a set of formulas that are much more general than in professional standards and subject area standards, are decomposed into separate themes of contact classes and independent preparation of students. At the same time, there are risks of missing or duplicating material in different disciplines and arbitrariness in the interpretation of general formulations of competencies by different authors of methodological developments. According to the authors, the use of the elements of competences allocated from the texts of standards, scientific and methodological developments and other sources of the subject field of activity of the university graduate, allows to determine the set and content of knowledge, skills and knowledge necessary for training in the field of preparation more fully, rationally distribute them among educational disciplines and practices, to form the main didactic units of the work program of the academic discipline, to ensure the traceability of the requirements to the results of mastering the disciplines to a specific source of requirements. In the process of research, a methodology for the collection, processing and systematization of information necessary for the preparation of documents for the organization of the educational process at the department of the university was developed and approved; the analysis of professional and branch standards of software engineering is carried out; an array of elements of competencies required by the graduate training directions 09.03.04 is formed; software tools for processing and structuring information, managing changes in the elements of competences, taking into account the interrelations between them are proposed. The article describes the structure of the data array of competencies required by the graduate of the bachelor’s degree in the direction of training 09.03.04 “Software Engineering”; the results of the analysis of the main types of competence sources are presented: the educational standard in the specified direction of bachelor’s degree, professional standards and branch standards of software engineering, ontological and architectural models of entities of the subject domain; an algorithm for the collection, processing and systematization of information necessary for the formation of competency elements; examples of forming various types elements of competences are given. The study has showed that the competence approach, expanded in the proposed methodology, to the formation of working programs of educational disciplines and practices of the basic professional educational program of higher education allows to ensure the completeness, relevance and consistency of the requirements for the preparation of students, the rational distribution of the subject matter of the teaching material between disciplines and their mutual coherence in the educational process.