The title of this book is drawn from that of an invitational conference and workshop held at Georgi a State University in Atlanta in September of 1980 . The conference was organized by the Institute fo r Certification of Computer Professionals {ICCP) with support from both the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM . Quoting from the Introduction : "The objectives of the conference were 1) to defin e systems analysis and design in terms of the current state of the art and 2) to define the knowledg e required to practice systems analysis and design ." Given that software engineering must be concerne d with the entire evolution of software systems, rather than the narrow concerns of programming, th e "mission" of the conference should be of interest to all practicing software engineers . With my ow n personal interest in the role of automatic programming in the systems development process, I was quite curious as to what insights I might gain from the proceedings of this conference .