In an attempt to improve the cost and quality issues in software, more than 40 years ago, NATO sponsored a conference which may have formally introduced the term, Software Engineering to the world. The term held out hope that the software community would improve matters if they viewed what they were doing as engineering rather than some form of cottage industry based on computer code. The fact was that what engineering meant as a profession was unfamiliar to most software developers at that time and still is a serious challenge to today's software professionals. Copyright © 2015 Software Consultants International Limited. All rights reserved.