[LINK] Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

[Jan Whitaker]

At 09:10 PM 14/01/2008, Janet Hawtin wrote:
> > the "how do you pick a plumber?" problem.
>
>Could this not be resolved by making the process of defining the
>question open so that the kinds of people who would give you
>interesting responses in that situation would become apparent. That
>way you do not get a plumber you get someone with excellent specific
>knowledge on integrated grey water systems in an on topic context?

I was involved in a project with just that approach back a few years 
now with a major uni. They got money from ARC to build something that 
hadn't been built before, brought me in from outside and trusted me 
to get it done. Did a bit of talking to a few folks, got a rough spec 
together, put out an RFI, interviewed a couple of vendors who thought 
they had solutions that migth do the job, or at least platforms that 
were flexible enough to do it, the uni hired them, we did a 
coordinated design and development, including thinking about 
sustainability and involvement of people located in four different 
states, and built a rough version, and tested it for a year. Then we 
did a thorough evaluation of those who were working with it and using 
it, took the feedback, revised and tweaked, then set it to run for 
six years with only minor monthly maintenance of the content and a 
few responses for when an error email arrived in my inbox. That 
system was used by people all over the world. Quite amazing for the 
little amount of money that was spent on it.

The point of all that reminiscing is that the idea was about all that 
existed. We were given the freedom to experiment for a reasonable 
period of time, let the system run its cycles for a while, then fixed 
the things that were problems and added enhancements based on what 
early users thought would be beneficial.

We had a team of plumbers, not just one, and I was probably the 
Sergeant Major operating the switchboard to keep all the important 
folks talking to one another. BTW, I am not a software engineer, but 
I did have some pretty good instructional systems training that 
helped me think of complex interactions and keep the parts working 
toward a common goal. The people part often gets left out in IT 
projects, particularly the folks who are actually supposed to benefit 
from them.

There is a certain project going on right now that shall remain 
nameless that has said to me they won't involve end users until the 
design is done. What the????? And they say they're use 'user centered 
design'!! oh, yeah??

Jan


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
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Living, like writing, requires no wisdom. Only revising does. - Jim 
Sollisch, Sept, 2007
'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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