This popped up on Twitter:
There are a lot of funny replies, but my serious attempt to answer it would be: Empower the User – because that is who the software is for. Empowering the user should be the primary concern of software engineering, and often it isn’t.
I’ve been thinking about my long-term career goal a lot lately. I’ve concluded it is:
Make powerful software tools accessible to as many people as possible
Empowering the user is central to this goal, which I settled on because it’s what I enjoy doing. When I see that something I’ve built, managed, designed, or otherwise had input in helps someone get something done more easily, efficiently, or in a novel way, I get some intrinsic pleasure.
A friend who works in ERP told me the mantra in manufacturing is “Genchi Genbutsu”, which he characterised as “be where your users are”. There are other interpretations of the mantra (see the Wikipedia article), but I like the concept of understanding users by being with them. Understanding their needs is crucial to building empowering tools.
Graham Markall 