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The Responsible Software Engineer Selected Readings in IT Professionalism
Springer London Berlin Heidelberg New York Barcelona Budapest Hong Kong Milan Paris Santa Clara Singapore Tokyo
Colin Myers, Tracy Hall and Dave Pitt (Eds)
The Responsible Software Engineer Selected Readings in IT Professionalism
With 15 Figures
Springer
Colin Myers, BA (Hons), MSc Tracy Hall, BA (Hons), MSc
School of Computer Science and Information Systems Engineering, University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London WIM 8JS, UK
Dave Pitt, BA (Hons), MSc
Worldwide Information Systems, NCR, 915 High Road, N. Finchley, London NI2 8QJ, UK
ISBN-13:978-3-540-76041-2
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The Responsible Software Engineer : selected readings in IT
professionalism 1. Software engineering 2. Software engineering -Professional ethics I. Myers, Colin II. Hall, Tracy III. Pitt, Dave OOS.1
ISBN-13:978-3-S40-76041-2 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4471-0923-S DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4471-0923-S
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Responsible Software Engineer : selected readings in IT professionalism 1 Colin Myers, Tracy Hall, and Dave Pill (eds.).
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13:978-3-S40-76041-2 1. Software engineering. I. Myers, Colin, 19S3-II. Hall, Tracy, 1965- • III. Pitt, Dave, 19S3-
QA76.758.R47 1996 96-9538 OOS.I'023--dc20 CIP
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
© Springer-Verlag London Limited 1997 Copyright in some individual contributions belongs to the authors
The use of registered names, trademarks etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.
Typesetting: Camera ready by editors
34/3830-543210 Printed on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Authors ix
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword - by Tom DeMarco 1
1 Introduction - by Colin Myers, Tracy Hall and Dave Pitt 7
Professional Bodies 17
2 Software Engineering: A New Professionalism - by Donald Gotterbarn 21
3 Attributes and Goals for a Mature Profession - by Gary A. Ford and Nonnan E. Gibbs 32
4 Establishing Standards of Professional Practice - by Don Gotterbarn 40
5 Professional Activities of the British Computer Society - by Geoff McMullen 43
6 Software Engineering Education, Personal Development and Hong Kong - by Mike Stranks 48
7 The Road to Professionalism in Medical Informatics - by Heather A. Heathfield and Jeremy Wyatt 60
8 Who should License Software Engineers? - by Robert Melford 72
Accountability 79
9 Is an Ethical Code Feasible? - by John Wilkes 83
10 Can a Software Engineer Afford to be Ethical? - by Duncan Langford 92
vi The Responsible Software Engineer
11 Software Project Management Ethics - by Simon Rogerson
12 Obligations for IT Ethics Education
100
- by Mary Lou Hines and J. Kenneth Blundell 107
13 Legal Aspects of Safety Critical Systems - by Dai Davis 113
14 Do Software Engineers Help or Hinder the Protection of Data? - by Elizabeth France 124
15 Is it Reasonable to Apply the Term Responsible to Non-Human Entities? - by John Race 129
Equal Opportunities 141
16 Technology and Citizenship for the Disabled, and Why it Matters to You - by Geoff Busby 143
17 Problem-Solving Tools for the Disabled - by Kari Marie Helle 148
18 Who Holds the Key to the Glass Door? - by Heather Gill 158
19 The Contribution Women Could Make to IT Professionalism - by Anne Leeming 167
20 But isn't Computing Boring? - by Christine Whitehouse, Gillian Lovegrove and Sue Williams 178
Working Practices 191
21 Professional Responsibilities and Information Systems Failure - by Paul Beynon-Davies 195
22 Problems in Requirements Communication - by Amer AI-Rawas and Steve Easterbrook 207
23 Responsibilities under the Capability Maturity Model - by Eugene G. McGuire 220
24 Revenge of the Methodology Anarchist - by John Madsen 229
Contents
25 Software Engineering Practices in the UK - by J. Barrie Thompson
26 Escaping the Mythology that Plagues Software Technology - by Stuart Shapiro
27 Is the Rush to Quality a Move to Inequality? - by Jawed Siddiqi and Andy Bissett
28 Pressures to Behave Unprofessionally - by Julian Webb, Lesley Rackley and John Betts
Education and Training
29 Selling, Marketing and Procuring Software - by Frank Bott
30 Curriculum Support for Professionalism - by Tony Cowling
31 Academic Perspectives of Professionalism - by Craig Gaskell and Annstrong A. Takang
32 Student Projects and Professionalism - by Frank Milsom
33 Converting Computer Science Graduates into Professionals - by Ray Dawson and Ron Newsham
34 Stereotypes, Young People and Computing - by John Wilkes
Bibliography
vii
239
249
258
265
273
277
285
296
306
320
332
343
List of Authors
Amer AI-Rawas University of Sussex, Brighton BNI9QH, UK [email protected]
John Betts University of the West of England, Bristol BSI6QY, UK [email protected]
Paul Beynon-Davies University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 IDL, UK [email protected]
Andy Bissett Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield S II 8HD, UK [email protected]
J Kenneth Blundell University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri 64110, USA [email protected]
Frank Bott University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, UK [email protected]
Geoff Busby GEC Computer Services, Great Baddow CM2 8HN, UK fax: 01245-475244
Tony Cowling University of Sheffield, Sheffield S 10 2TN, UK [email protected]
Dai Davis Eversheds, Leeds LS I 2IB, UK 100067,[email protected]
Ray Dawson Loughborough University, Loughborough LEI I 3TU, UK [email protected]
Tom DeMarco Atlantic Systems Guild, Camden, Maine 04843, USA [email protected]
Steve Easterbrook NASAlWYU SRL, Fairmont, WV 26554, USA [email protected]
Gary Ford SEI, Carnegie-Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15121, USA [email protected]
Craig Gaskell University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK [email protected]
Norman Gibbs Guildford College, Greensboro, North Carolina 27410, USA [email protected]
Heather Gill IBM Hursley Park, Winchester S0212JN, UK heather~ill @uk.ibm.com
Don Gotterbarn East Tennesse State University, Johnson City 37640, USA [email protected]
Tracy Hall University of Westminster, London WIM 8JS, UK [email protected]
Heather Heathfield Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester MI 5GD, UK [email protected]
Kari Marie Helle Work Research Institute, Box 8171 - 0034 Oslo, Norway fax: 0047-22-568918
Mary Lou Hines University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri 64110, USA [email protected]
Duncan Langford University of Kent, Canterbury CT27NF, UK [email protected]
x The Responsible Software Engineer
Anne Leeming City University, London EC2Y 8BH , UK [email protected]
Gillian Lovegrove Staffordshire University, Stafford ST180DG, UK [email protected]
John Madsen lSD, Dept for E&E, Sheffield SI4PQ, UK fax: 0114-259-4580
Gene McGuire American University, Washington, DC 20016-8116 USA [email protected]
Geoff McMullen BCS, Swindon SNIIHJ, UK [email protected]
Robert Melford Mission Viejo, California 92692, USA [email protected]
Frank Milsom Boumemouth University, Poole, Dorset BHI25BB, UK [email protected]
Colin Myers University of Westminster, London WIM 8JS, UK [email protected]
Ron Newsham University of Derby, Derby DE22 lBG, UK [email protected]
Dave Pitt NCR, London N12 8QJ, UK [email protected]
John Race Expert Witness, 12 Thames St, Abingdon OXI43HZ, UK [email protected]
Lesley Rackley University of the West of England, Bristol BS 1 6QY, UK [email protected]
Simon Rogerson DeMontfort University, Leicester LEI 9BH, UK [email protected]
Stuart Shapiro Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK [email protected]
Jawed Siddiqui Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield SII 8HD, UK [email protected]
Mike Stranks City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong [email protected]
Armstrong Takang University of Hull, Hull HU67RX, UK [email protected]
J Barrie Thompson University of Sunderland, Sunderland SRI 3SD, UK barrie. thompson @sunderland.ac.uk
Julian Webb University of the West of England, Bristol BS 1 6QY, UK [email protected]
Christine Whitehouse Staffordshire University, Stafford ST18 ODG, UK [email protected]
John Wilkes Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge CB 1 IPT UK [email protected]
Sue Williams Staffordshire University, Stafford ST18 ODG, UK [email protected]
Jeremy Wyatt Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London WC2A 3PX, UK [email protected]
Acknowledgments
This book is a collection of essays on professional attitudes, awareness and responsibility in the IT and Software Engineering industry. We thank everyone concerned with the evolution and production of this book, and especially we thank the individual chapter authors and Tom DeMarco for his most professional foreword. However, the views expressed in any particular chapter are not necessarily those of other contributors or the editors: the book is intended to raise debate, and we would be disappointed if the book did not lead to some, healthy, disagreement. We encourage all comments to be made directly to the authors of individual chapters.
By contrast, this is the place to acknowledge our fellow professionals, and to thank, on behalf of the individual chapter authors, the following: Fretwell-Downing Data Systems of Sheffield for providing sponsorship that facilitated Tony Cowling's contribution; the National Council for Education Technology, the members of the Women in Technology Foundation, Judith Doughty of UCAS, Jacqueline Coxson and David Knight at Bournemouth University, CSU Publications, Hampshire Education Authority, Karen Murry and the many other women at IBM Hursley who provided valuable information for Heather Gill; Robin Jeeps, Martin Pickering and Keith Bywood for their helpful comments to John Madsen; Gordon Hukins and Judy Wateridge, and the rest of the Group Project team and students at Bournemouth University for their contribution to Frank Milsom; Professor Ken Jukes' input to the chapter by Julian Webb, Lesley Rackley and John Betts, and the many other silent midwives to the rest of the chapters in this book.
Finally, we take this opportunity to thank the members of the PASE96 programme review committee, for their constructive comments on initial drafts of these chapters: Mike Allen, BCS; Dr Alfs Berztiss, University of Pittsburgh; Elizabeth Duff, University of Westminster; Charles Easteal, IT Consultant; Dr Duncan Langford, University of Kent; Anne Leeming, City University London; Dr Gillian Lovegrove, University of Staffordshire; John Madsen, Department of Education and Employment; Ron McQuaker, BCS; Ellen Neighbour, Women into Information Technology Foundation; Dr. Isobel Nicholson, University of Central Lancashire; Edmund O'Shaughnessy, DRA Portsdown; Dr Pat Pearce, University of Plymouth; Dr Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Systems Software Inc; Mark Priestley, University of Westminster; Paul Quintas, Open University; Simon Rogerson, De Montfort University; Dr Rupert Simpson, University of Central England; David Wilson, Sydney University of Technology; Prof Derek Wilson, lEE; and, particularly Dr Wendy Stokes, London Guildhall University.
Foreword
You might expect that a person invited to contribute a foreword to a book on the subject of professionalism 1 would himself be a professional of exemplary standing. I am gladdened by that thought, but also disquieted. The disquieting part of it is that if I am a professional, I must be a professional something, but what? As someone who has tried his best for the last thirty years to avoid doing anything twice, I lack one of the most important characteristics of a professional, the dedicated and persistent pursuit of a single direction.
For the purposes of this foreword, it would be handy if I could think of myself as a professional abstractor. That would allow me to offer up a few useful abstractions about professionalism, patterns that might illuminate the essays that follow. I shall try to do this by proposing three successively more complex models of professionalism, ending up with one that is discomfortingly soft, but still, the best approximation I can make of what the word means to me.
The first of these models I shall designate Model Zero. I intend a pejorative sense to this name, since the attitude represented by Model Zero is retrograde and offensive ... but nonetheless common. In this model, the word "professionalism" is a simple surrogate for compliant uniformity.
In Model Zero organizations, you may be considered unprofessional because of the way you dress, or wear your hair (either longer than God intended for males, or shorter than God intended for females), or because of what you post on your walls. You can definitely be thought unprofessional for questioning authority or contradicting Revealed Truth. Popping popcorn in the microwave is unprofessional in Model Zero companies, presumably because it gives the workplace an unprofessional odour. Professionalism seems to have to do with almost anything except getting quality work done.
The Model Zero manager is demonstrating a compulsive need for uniformity, something that we encounter from time to time in gardeners. Here I refer to that meticulous kind of gardener who would pluck and throwaway a perfect carrot (perhaps the healthiest one in the garden) just because it is growing an inch or two outside the row. Such a gardener seems to have forgotten what the purpose of a garden is: to grow plants that are as big and succulent and as healthy as they can be. Or perhaps he/she has a variant purpose for the garden: to be a living demonstration of the Gardener's dominion O"Ier the land. So too the Model Zero manager.
One Model Zero company I know declared all facial hair unprofessional. This was in the 1970s, a time when beards and moustaches were largely out of favour. Well, that's not entirely true. Beards and moustaches were out of favour among white men. Among black men, they were ubiquitous. And so the proscription against facial hair seemed (to me at least) to be implying that blackness was unprofessional. Of course, nothing of the sort was ever said by that company's management.
1 This foreword was adapted by Tom DeMarco from his Keynote address to the 1996 Conference on Professional Awareness in Software Engineering. Foreword © 1996 by Tom DeMarco
2 The Responsible Software Engineer
It is tempting to laugh at Model Zero management, since today we have mostly moved beyond these trivial obsessions with surface uniformity. But Model Zero is still alive and well, still requiring compliant uniformity of employees, and still calling it "professionalism". As you read these words, I speculate there some poor soul receiving a managerial dressing down at a company near your for asking a question about some kind of toxin that is being voided by the company into the local waters each morning at 4am. "Yes", the manager acknowledges, "we do release rather minute quantities of Strontium-90 before dawn each day. It would however be extremely unprofessional of you to mention this to local authorities, or, worst of all, to the press."
In most organizations there is still a bit of residual Model Zero thinking about professionalism. Before letting your own company off the hook, try taking the following test: Would you or your management be at all inclined to think it was unprofessional to cry in the workplace? Crying, of course, is an extremely unnatural act for about half the human race. For the other half it is the most natural thing in the world. The idea that crying might be an example of unprofessional behaviour is little more than Model Zero's hidden assertion that being female is also unprofessional.
Model Zero, for all its popularity, is just an aberration. The word "professionalism" must certainly mean something more than knuckling under and not making waves.
A substantially more satisfying notion of professionalism is embodied in the next model. In this view, professionalism is made up of three characteristics. Since the words describing these characteristics all begin with the letter P, I refer to this as a 3-P model. The three characteristics are:
1. Proficient: Whatever it is that a professional does, he/she must do it with deftness and agility, with skill born of long practice.
2. Permanent: The long practice comes from the permanence of the professional's calling. We've all encountered actors who waited tables while waiting for a part to come along. They may be professional actors, but they are certainly not professional waiters (there are such things), since they aren't permanently dedicated to that endeavour.
3. Professing: Finally there must be some act of involvement by which the professional declares his/her intention to be, now and forever, a part of one chosen calling. The act may be a public ceremony or it may be a simple, private resolution of the form:
(name of profession) equals me.
Some years ago I came across a very beautiful example of a professing. It was the statement carved by a Scottish fisherman over the hearth of his storm-tossed seaside home. The words he carved were these:
"It is no will-o-the-wisp that I have followed here."
It was intention, not chance, that led him where he went. This is the declarative act of a professional.
Foreword 3
The 3-P Model still lacks something, an ethical dimension. People we think of as professionals are governed by some kind of code. They know their profession gives them opportunities for wrong-doing, and they know what they will and will not do for ethical reasons. I propose to embody this idea in a fourth P-term:
4. Promise-keeping: Professional make certain promises to themselves (sometimes to the public at large) about what they will and won't do. Professionals keep those promises.
I have separated promise-keeping in this fashion, making it the distinguishing characteristic of true professionalism as embodied by the 4-P Model, because it is promise-keeping that, most of all, divides professionalism in our field from its opposite.
Even in the traditional professions like medicine and law and clergy, promisekeeping is the most complex of the trappings of a professional. It is the one where most lapses of professionalism occur. Consider a typical lapse in each of these traditional callings:
• a doctor blabs about Mr. So-and-So's incredible venereal wart
• a lawyer tells a friend that he has been left out of his uncle's will
• a minister gives away the identity of a man who has confessed to lusting after his neighbour's teenage daughter
Note first of all that each of these is a violation of an implicit promise. When you go to your doctor, legal advisor or cleric, you generally impart some private information that might conceivably be used against your interest. You almost never think to exact an explicit promise from such a professional not to violate your confidentiality. You take the professional's promise-keeping for granted. This is potentially dangerous ground, because the very basis of your transaction is tied up in soft perceptions of correct behaviour. You and your consulting professional may well understand the root matter in the same way, but that leaves nearly infinite possibility for misunderstandings about borderline cases. Yet, in spite of this, implicit promises are rarely broken by professional people, and almost never by casual error. The reason for this is that professionals take their promises very seriously; they are in a constant state of ethical introspection. I shall come back to this idea.
A second observation about the three example lapses I cited above is that each one has to do with a failure to keep confidential information confidential. I find this rather troubling, because the ugliest Model Zero example I related , the one about the employee being enjoined not to leak sensitive information to authorities or to the press, is also about keeping confidential information confidential. If you draw the general rule that a professional's promise-keeping obligation is as simple as "don't blab what you learned in confidence" then you condone the employee's silence about toxic pollution at the same time you celebrate doctors and lawyers and clergy and their firm resolve not to compromise those who confide in them.
There are no simple, general rules in ethics; ethics is about values and value conflict, philosophy and morality, and a willingness and capability to confront intricate and convoluted conundrums. The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule may get
4 The Responsible Software Engineer
you to Heaven, but they won't (all by themselves) make you an ethical promise-keeper. The only thing that will do that is to keep your self in a permanent state of ethical introspection. In order to make it clear what I mean by this introspection, consider its opposite. The most familiar form of this opposite is what I call:
The Fatal Premise: Evil is done by evil people; I am not an evil person and therefore I cannot do evil.
The Fatal Premise gives you an ethical blank check: If you did it, it must be OK. It is my learned opinion that about half the world's population believes the Fatal Premise. One who is governed by this premise is neither ethical nor unethical, but a ethical non-participant. Such a person can never be a true professional, because his or her introspection mechanism is disarmed.
The Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offers a counter to the Fatal Premise in the following quote:
"The line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between classes nor between parties [individuals] either, but through the middle of every human heart."
To be an ethical human being you need to be aware of your capacity to be evil, your dark side. To the extent that it is our business to foster professionalism, we need to focus mostly on helping people get past the Fatal Premise so they can deal with the possibility of their own evil. All meaningful evil on earth is done by good people, not by evil people. The capacity to do evil is in each one of us.
I assert that the 4-P Model, as I have described it, defines professionalism at its best. It describes ideal behaviour not just of doctors and lawyers and clerics, but of all the true professionals of this era and eras past. It embraces nurses and therapists, carpenters and farmers and bricklayers. It makes room for the Knights of Malta, the Engineers who built the Roman viaducts, Renaissance artists like Michaelangelo and Bernini, the Egyptian doctors who invented the first science of medicine. They were all professionals to the extent that they passed the four P-tests: they were proficient at what they did, they were permanent in their involvement, they professed their dedication and they had a code of promises arbitrated by a permanent ethical sense.
Since the vocations I've mentioned all have a certain cachet, I might mention that professionalism need not be limited to those who practice some sophisticated or highly respectable trade. Consider a man at bottom of any conceivable hierarchy: Jeeves. He too passes the four P-tests. His permanence is legendary (unthinkable that he might take up a position in retailing, for example), he is deft at each of the tasks he undertakes, he has a code of conduct that is his constant concern, and he has solemnly declared his dedication to his calling. The man even belongs to a professional society, the Ganymede Club. There can be no doubt that Jeeves is a professional.
I end by asking you to consider a final candidate class for professionalism: If there is room in the professional ranks for butlers, why not managers?
Since I have been fortunate enough to work under seven great managers in my days, I know that there is such a thing as a professional manager. There are certainly many managers who satisfy three of the four P-tests: they are proficient, permanent
Foreword 5
and good promise keepers. Curiously, in management, the most conspicuous missing element is one that we almost take for granted among software professionals at the lower levels: the professing act. Many managers can't bring themselves to profess to be managers. One who manages a group of engineers, tends to think of himself or herself as an engineer; one who manages a group of physicians tends to think of himself or herself as a physician.
This unwillingness to profess is a sad consequence of our persistent and ignorant derogation of the management role. The constant assertion that management is mere "overhead", potential fat for the next trimming, has had its effect on managers themselves. We are breeding a generation of managers that dares not manage. A manager who manages might get downsized; better instead to pitch in and do some of the work of the people being managed. There is (so this line of thinking goes) nobility in the work, but no nobility in management of that work.
This is pure poppycock. If the work is noble, the catalytic function that is management of that work is even more noble. We need to assert and re-assert the essential respectability of what managers do. It is not a far-fetched contention that management is a noble calling. What could be more admirable, more professional, than the manager's most essential tasks: guiding, forming, coaching, and inspiring people, building healthy corporate culture and safe and productive teams?
We will never succeed in building professional awareness among programmers and analysts and designers and testers and integrators, unless we also succeed in fostering a professional awareness among their managers.