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1.6 Understanding People in the Development Effort
To help in the fostering of a quality mindset in the development of the software, one should understand the people involved in the software development process, particularly,
their interest regarding the system and the software that needs to be developed. In this section, there are two major groups that are involved in the software development effort,
specifically, end-users and development team.
1.6.1 End-users
End-users are the people who will be using the end-product. Much of the requirements will be coming from this group. They can be grouped into two according to their
involvement within the system organization and development, namely, those who are directly involved and those who are indirectly involved.
Those who are directly involved
Table 1 shows the categorization of the end-users according to the job functions that they perform within the system.
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Operational Job
Supervisor Job
Executive Job
They perform the operational functions of the
system. They perform supervisory
actions on daily operations of the system. They are mostly
measured and motivated by performance against budget.
They usually provide the initiative and serve as the
funding authority of the systems development
project.
They are more likely to be concerned with the human
interface component of the system:
• What type of keyboard
will be using? • What kind of on-line
display screen will the system have?
• Will there be a lot of glare and will the
characters be easy to read?
They are more likely to be concerned with the operational
efficiency of the functions that needs to be performed such as
more outputs in less time. They are less likely to be
concerned with the day-to- day operations. They are
more concerned with strategic issues and long-
term profit-and-loss.
They have the local view of the system.
They also tend to have the same local and physical view
of the system similar with the operational users but will have
performance concerns. They are most likely
interested in the global view of the system.
They tend to think of the system in physical terms.
They are the users who have more contact with the software
engineers. They are generally able to
work with abstract models of the system rather than
the physical terms. They are more interested in
results.
Table 1: Job Category
General Guidelines with End-Users • The higher the level of the manager, the less he or she is likely to care about
computer technology. It would be best to ask him or her over-all results and performance the system can provide. They are good candidates for interview
regarding the report layouts and code design.
• The goals and priorities of management may be in conflict with those of the supervisory and operational users. This can be seen based on their different
levels of concerns. As software engineer, try to discover areas of commonality. More on this on Chapter 3- Requirements Engineering.
• Management may not provide resources, funding or time that the users feel is necessary to build an effective system. Resource and financial constraints will
occur. It is important to prioritize requirements. More on this on Chapter 3- Requirements Engineering.
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Those who are indirectly involved
Mostly, these group includes the auditors, standard bearers, and quality assurance group. The general objective of this group is to ensure that the system is developed in
accordance with various standard set such as:
• Accounting standards developed by the organizations accounting operations or firm.
• Standards developed by other departments within the organization or by the customer or user who will inherit the system
• Various standards imposed by the government regulatory agencies. Some possible problem that may be encountered with this group. As software
engineers, keep an eye on them and address them accordingly. • They dont get involved in the project until the very end, particularly, the
quality assurance group. It is important that they be involved in every activity that would require their expertise and opinion.
• They provide the necessary notation and format of documentation. They may be needed in the definition of the presentation and documentation of the
system. • They are more interested in substance rather than form.
1.6.2 Development Team