A decade ago nobody could have imagined the crucial role that software would play in our everyday life. The artificial boundaries between hardware, software, telecommunication, and many other disciplines are getting blurred very rapidly.This book presents the essentials of theory and practice of software engineering in an abstracted form. Presenting the information based on software development life cycle, the text guides the students through all the stages of software production - Requirements, Designing, Construction, Testing and Maintenance.This book emphasizes on non-coding areas. It includes appendices on "need to know" basis. It makes the learning easier as organized by software development life cycle.This text is well suited for academic courses on Software Engineering or for conducting training programmes for software professionals. This book will be equally useful to the instructors of software engineering as well as busy professionals who wish to grasp the essentials of software engineering without attending a formal instructional course