Software Engineering Tools – Online Best Practices, Tools & Templates

Software Engineering Tools are used to create disciplined software development and include software tools such as version control, coding standards, static code analysis, code reviews, bug tracking, continuous automated build processes, and automated testing.

There are many tools available to help software developers and development teams manage their software engineering process.  The following is an overview of some of the most widely used software engineering tools:

• Version Control helps teams organize and maintain their code, keeping a history of changes that have been checked in, and allowing many engineers to work in the code effectively.
• Coding Standards help with code readability, and consistency, as well as helping to avoid common performance and language feature related bugs.
• Static Code Analysis is most valuable when used in an automated system to catch and fix bugs like uninitialized variables.
• Code Reviews improve code quality and reduce bugs, and having a tool to help makes the process less cumbersome and time consuming for the team.
• Bug Tracking allows product owners to prioritize fixes and determine which ones can be shipped.
• Continuous Automated Builds and Testing ensure that development teams do not need to wade through code submissions to find compile errors or merge problems, and automated testing can catch bugs without human intervention.

Some of the most popular software engineering tools include:

• Version Control: Perforce, GitHub, GitLab
• Coding Standards: Google for the most common languages (C++, JavaScript, Java, Python)
• Static Code Analysis: Visual Studio Metrics, SonarQube, CPP Check
• Code Reviews: Swarm for Perforce, GitHub, GitLab
• Bug Tracking: Jira
• Continuous Automated Builds and Testing: Jenkins

Software Engineering Tools and templates include many kinds of charting software, spreadsheets, or simply a long, horizontal paper which can be drawn on and updated for each of the stages.

Learn more about upBOARD’s full portfolio of online digital best practice tools and templates for specific topics, including business strategy, marketing, human resources, operations, innovation, project management, change management, and software development.

Learn more about upBOARD’s portfolio of other software development best practice tools and templates, including: Bug Log, Software Development Life Cycle Management, Software Development Planning, Software Technology Evaluation, Software Engineering Tools, and JIRA Dashboarding.