Abstract:
Society 5.0, with all its different cyber-physical aspects not only presents a technical
challenge, but also significantly changes the structures and business processes of
organizations. It requires software engineers and developers to consider a new level of
socio-technical interaction and planning. Software should not be the point of friction
among products, services and users, but should rather encourage software engineers and
developers to become more human-oriented. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to
investigate the future of work skills in Society 5.0 for software engineers and developers.
We collected and analyzed two datasets; one dataset containing academic peer reviewed
publications and the second dataset encompassed popular press articles that predicted the
future of software engineering and development. We used the Software Engineering
Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) to map the data and found that future of work skills for
software engineers and developers are driven by software foundations and the evolution
of new programming languages and technologies e.g. quantum computing. In addition,
software professional practices such as containerization, no / low-code development and
fast innovation / prototyping cycles will affect the future of work together with software
development practices such as cross-platform development, continuous integration and
deployment, and cybersecurity. Based on the findings, we developed a skills evaluation
tool that could be used to establish a future of work skills profile. By considering the
evolution of the software engineering and –development role, as well as the future
requirement due to technology evolution, a software engineer and developer may be able
to prepare themselves for the Society 5.0 domain.
