Sue Conger's "The New Software Engineering"
Read the "Introduction" and "Software Engineering" sections in Chapter 1 (pages 1-4). You will use this text throughout the course, so you may want to save a copy of the PDF to easily access it as you move through each unit. This text positions software engineering as a multi-trillion dollar investment in typical Fortune 1000 companies. It discusses what software engineering is and defines basic software engineering terms. Take your time in reading and jot down any ideas or notes that stand out to you as particularly useful (or, conversely, confusing).
Click Conger-NewSoftwareEngineering.pdf link to view the file.