While I agree that "real engineering always has to account for financial realities including cash flow as a constraint or optimization parameter" and that, as I said, "Competent engineers (...) have to understand at least the basics of the management context in which they operate," that's no substitute for attempting to replace real engineering with project management in the curriculum, which is what the SWEBOK is attempting to do—as my analysis conclusively shows!
Contrast, for example, MIT's required courses for a degree in mechanical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/mechanical-engineering...): 13 required core subjects of which zero are project-management stuff; one course chosen from a menu of four of which one is "The Product Engineering Process" and another "Engineering Systems Design"; and two electives chosen from a menu of 22, of which three are project-management stuff. The core subjects are Mechanics and Materials (I and II), Dynamics and Control (I and II), Thermal-Fluids Engineering (I and II), Design and Manufacturing (I and II), Numerical Computation for Mechanical Engineers, Mechanical Engineering Tools, Measurement and Instrumentation, Differential Equations, and your undergraduate thesis.
Berkeley's equivalent is https://me.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ME-Flowch..., with math courses, chemistry courses, physics courses, and engineering courses such as ENGIN 7 (Introduction to Computer Programming for Scientists and Engineers), ENGIN 26 (Three-Dimensional Modeling for Design), ENGIN 29 (Manufacturing and Design Communication, which might sound like a project management course but is actually about things like manufacturing process tolerances and dimensioning), MEC ENG 40 (Thermodynamics), and MEC ENG 132 (Dynamic Systems and Feedback). Again, as far as I can tell, there's virtually no project-management material in here. Project management stuff doesn't constitute one tenth of the curriculum, much less two thirds of it.
The software equivalent of Thermal-Fluids Engineering II, Differential Equations, or Thermodynamics is not, I'm sorry, proposals and cash flow, nor is it multiple-attribute decision making, nor is it corporate operational risk management.
The same holds true of chemical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/chemical-engineering-c...) or electrical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/electrical-engineering...) or basically any other engineering field except "systems engineering". In all of these courses you spend basically all of your time studying the thing your engineering is nominally focused on and the science you use, such as chemical reactions, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, separation processes, algorithms, electric circuits, and the theory of dynamical systems, and very little time on HR, accounting, and project management.
That's because HR, accounting, and project management aren't real engineering, much as the SWEBOK tries to pretend they are.
Real engineering is a craft based on science, navigating tradeoffs to solve problems despite great intellectual difficulty, and that's just as true of software—even yet another CRUD web app—as of gears, hydraulic cylinders, electric circuits, or chemical plants.
Contrast, for example, MIT's required courses for a degree in mechanical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/mechanical-engineering...): 13 required core subjects of which zero are project-management stuff; one course chosen from a menu of four of which one is "The Product Engineering Process" and another "Engineering Systems Design"; and two electives chosen from a menu of 22, of which three are project-management stuff. The core subjects are Mechanics and Materials (I and II), Dynamics and Control (I and II), Thermal-Fluids Engineering (I and II), Design and Manufacturing (I and II), Numerical Computation for Mechanical Engineers, Mechanical Engineering Tools, Measurement and Instrumentation, Differential Equations, and your undergraduate thesis.
Berkeley's equivalent is https://me.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ME-Flowch..., with math courses, chemistry courses, physics courses, and engineering courses such as ENGIN 7 (Introduction to Computer Programming for Scientists and Engineers), ENGIN 26 (Three-Dimensional Modeling for Design), ENGIN 29 (Manufacturing and Design Communication, which might sound like a project management course but is actually about things like manufacturing process tolerances and dimensioning), MEC ENG 40 (Thermodynamics), and MEC ENG 132 (Dynamic Systems and Feedback). Again, as far as I can tell, there's virtually no project-management material in here. Project management stuff doesn't constitute one tenth of the curriculum, much less two thirds of it.
The software equivalent of Thermal-Fluids Engineering II, Differential Equations, or Thermodynamics is not, I'm sorry, proposals and cash flow, nor is it multiple-attribute decision making, nor is it corporate operational risk management.
The same holds true of chemical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/chemical-engineering-c...) or electrical engineering (https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/electrical-engineering...) or basically any other engineering field except "systems engineering". In all of these courses you spend basically all of your time studying the thing your engineering is nominally focused on and the science you use, such as chemical reactions, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, separation processes, algorithms, electric circuits, and the theory of dynamical systems, and very little time on HR, accounting, and project management.
That's because HR, accounting, and project management aren't real engineering, much as the SWEBOK tries to pretend they are.
Real engineering is a craft based on science, navigating tradeoffs to solve problems despite great intellectual difficulty, and that's just as true of software—even yet another CRUD web app—as of gears, hydraulic cylinders, electric circuits, or chemical plants.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41918787 for my thoughts on what a real-engineering curriculum about software would include.