Quantum Software Engineering: A New Genre of Computing

Quantum computing (QC) is no longer only a scientific interest but is rapidly becoming an industrially available technology that can potentially tackle the limitations of classical computing. Over the last few years, major technology giants have invested in developing hardware and programming frameworks to develop quantum-specific applications. QC hardware technologies are gaining momentum, however, operationalizing the QC technologies trigger the need for software-intensive methodologies, techniques, processes, tools, roles, and responsibilities for developing industrial-centric quantum software applications. This paper presents the vision of the quantum software engineering (QSE) life cycle consisting of quantum requirements engineering, quantum software design, quantum software implementation, quantum software testing, and quantum software maintenance. This paper particularly calls for joint contributions of software engineering research and industrial community to present real-world solutions to support the entire quantum software development activities. The proposed vision facilitates the researchers and practitioners to propose new processes, reference architectures, novel tools, and practices to leverage quantum computers and develop emerging and next generations of quantum software.