you need a domain expert to understand a situation.

A major theme of Software for Domain Experts is that you need a domain expert to understand a situation.

That is perhaps a definition of an expert – someone who understands a situation, the cause and effect (what leads to what) and how to influence the cause to get the effect you want.

Gaining expertise is something anybody can do – and most of us do become experts at something. Not many things, because the effort and mental energy required to understand a domain is enormous.

Going along with this is the idea that expertise needs to be valued – those of us who use the services of experts need to be willing to make sure that the right expert is in the right position.

A  glorious subtext here is that an expert doesn’t need to dress themselves up in grand titles or overcome any prejudice to be recognised – if society needs an expert, the expert can be from any group, any age, any sex, any disability doesn’t matter (except certain mental disabilities which mean you can’t understand a situation..!)

In the past, we would have done this without thinking – if you want shoes mended you find the person who knows how to mend shoes, whose father knew how to mend shoes, and passed generations of knowledge onto him (or her). It doesn’t happen like that today, but it probably should.