Quantum Software Engineering Challenges from Developers' Perspective: Mapping Research Challenges to the Proposed Workflow Model
Majid Haghparast, Tommi Mikkonen, Jukka K. Nurminen, Vlad Stirbu
TL;DR
This paper investigates quantum software engineering from developers' viewpoints, arguing that effective quantum software requires a co-design approach that combines agile-like iteration with formal methods. It introduces a concrete quantum software workflow mapping from problem formulation to execution and interpretation, then surveys existing research across design, deployment, and interpretation to identify gaps. The authors propose a research agenda that emphasizes taxonomy for problem suitability, live prototyping, formal verification, flexible deployment, and data-driven error analysis to support reliable quantum applications. The work aims to guide future tool, method, and process development to enable cost-effective, reliable quantum software in practice.
Abstract
Despite the increasing interest in quantum computing, the aspect of development to achieve cost-effective and reliable quantum software applications has been slow. One barrier is the software engineering of quantum programs, which can be approached from two directions. On the one hand, many software engineering practices, debugging in particular, are bound to classical computing. On the other hand, quantum programming is closely associated with the phenomena of quantum physics, and consequently, the way we express programs resembles the early days of programming. Moreover, much of the software engineering research today focuses on agile development, where computing cycles are cheap and new software can be rapidly deployed and tested, whereas in the quantum context, executions may consume lots of energy, and test runs may require lots of work to interpret. In this paper, we aim at bridging this gap by starting with the quantum computing workflow and by mapping existing software engineering research to this workflow. Based on the mapping, we then identify directions for software engineering research for quantum computing.