This text is organized in three parts. The first part motivates the reader, explaining why knowledge of software engineering is important to practitioners and researchers alike. Part 1 also discusses the need for understanding process issues, for making decisions about the degree of "agility" developers will have, and for doing careful project planing. Part 2 walks through the major steps of development and maintenance, regardless pf the process model used to build the software : eliciting, modeling and checking the requirements, designing a solution to the problem, writing and testing the code, and turning it over to the customer. Part 3 focuses on evaluation and improvement. It looks at how we can assess the quality of our processes and products, and how to take steps to improve them.