The Proceedings of the 3rd Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES 1989) bring the papers selected and presented in the edition of the event held in Recife/PE, from October 25-27, 1989. In this issue, the proceedings include 24 full papers. These papers were selected through a peer-review, from a total of 40 papers submitted, which implied an acceptance rate of 36.9%. This volume was organized by Roberto Spolidoro (SEI), Eratóstenes Araújo (CNPq), Décio Fonseca, Judith Kelner, and Silvio Meira (UFPE), the event's Chairs.