Software as a Human Activity

Lecture 10-1
Bart Massey 2015-11-30

Heads Up

• Today we'll talk about software as a human activity

• This is a bigger-picture topic

• Themes

  • SE is people (People!)

  • SE impacts society

    

SE Is People

• Probably the single biggest lesson this course fails to teach

• It is remarkable how much software is built in a year

  • US: 2.5m jobs, $450b in 2012 SIAA study

• Obviously, all of this is not built by well-trained geniuses

  • Perhaps this is a good thing?

• SE is about making it possible for ordinary people to build extraordinary programs

  

Overhead Is People

• We try to reduce overhead and rework in SE

• But people don't work like that

  • People are social animals
  • People plunge forward

• Maybe better to just put hard stops where people will screw up, and then let them behave like people

  

Scrum In One Slide

• Agile Method

• c.f. Wikipedia

• Roles: Product Owner, Developer, Scrum Master

• Workflow: Series of 2-weekish Sprints

  • Planning, Daily Stand-Ups, Review and Retrospective
  • Planning Poker

• Artifacts: Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment, Burn-Down Chart

  

Impacts Of Software

• Captain Obvious checks in

• Software is everywhere, creates its own ecosystem

  • So think hard during requirements, design, risk analysis

• Software is expensive

  • Complex thing with lots of thought in it
  • Not to be entered into lightly
  • (The Internet is serious business)

• Software is fragile

  • No derating
  • Terrible V&V

  • Unintended consequences

    

What You Can Do

• Act ethically

• Educate the public

• Provide responsible review