Challenges of the Digital Transformation in Software Engineering

Digital transformation describes the changes that the increased digitization within society causes or influences in all aspects of human life. The digital business transformation can be understood as the impact of the increased digitization on the business domain. Companies are challenged to transform, i.e., to create new business models that consider and leverage the increased digitization. As a result, from a software engineering perspective, the digital transformation changes the way how software is developed. Current trends are the development of applications for mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, with these new application fields, new challenges for software engineering arise that have to be met to successfully conduct software projects in a digitized world. It is necessary for software companies to solve these challenges if they want to be successful on the market. In this article, these challenges are worked out. Furthermore, solution approaches, such as Application Programming Interface (API) strategy and an appropriate team culture, are derived to help software developers and companies to prepare for future software projects and to remain competitive. Keywords-digital transformation; digitization; software engineering; challenge