Approaches to software engineering: A human-centred perspective

Abstract

The field of software engineering has been evolving since its inception in 1968. Arguments as to the exact nature of the field, whether it should be conceived as a real engineering profession, the role of formal methods, whether it is as much an art as a science, etc., continue to divide both practitioners and academics. My purpose here is not to debate these particular topics, but rather to approach the field from the outside, coming as I do from a long period of involvement in the human and social side of the computing discipline, namely, from the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Participative Design, Interaction Design, and Social Informatics, more generally. I wish to examine how this "human- centred" perspective might shed a new light on some issues within the SE field, perhaps opening up topics for further discussion and examination. © 2010 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.