What is people centric software engineering

People centric software engineering means building software which is designed to help people. If the people has a specific objective to reach and the software is designed to help them reach it (so we are not talking about for example computer games), what might this mean?

 

  • Presenting people with information they need to make decisions and understand a situation
  • Understanding what people need
  • Providing good data
  • Providing good tools via mobile devices where applicable
  • Building software which can automatically go through standard steps which a person might go through
  • Building tools so the right people can provide the right information where required
  • Constantly reviewing so software does not have superfluous features etc
  • Good data models / domain models in the tools beneath it
  • Understanding what people actually do
  • Software company building up ‘platform’ businesses of having expertise in certain areas – because while there are differences in how people work between companies, the core ideas are probably pretty similar
  • Easy ways to build tools and try stuff out (‘low code’)
  • Robust and accessible underlying data management systems
  • Tools to check data and make it easier to enter
  • Automate tasks like sorting through old paper documents
  • Make it clear how decisions are being made