Who and why should apply Value-Driven Analysis and Design (VDAD)?
In principle, VDAD is aimed at anyone involved in the process of software engineering or the creation of digital solutions in general. From company founders and (product) managers to requirements and software engineers we want to address everyone who wants to craft software that is valuable and does not harm humanity and our values.
The following user stories serve to exemplify potential applications of VDAD and illustrate the mission of our project.
As a product manager of a software-intensive system,
I want to make sure that the system is not only successful in its market and pleasing and/or helping its users,
but also meets the ethical expectations of everybody involved with it.
As a responsible product manager of a software-intensive system,
I want to raise awareness for ethical concerns on all levels of my organization,
from executive managment to business domain experts to DevOps teams,
so that this important but presumably unwelcome topic area becomes a first class citizen
of software and systems engineering right next to business value and end user wants and needs.
As a responsible member of the development and operations team(s) for a software-intensive system,
I want to live up to my personal and my communities' values and beliefs in my daily work
despite business and management pressure that possibly causes goal conflicts
so that I do not feel bad/suffer from bad conscience. I walk the talk.
As a member of the development and operations team(s) for a software-intensive system,
I want to express and explain my ethical values with the priorities they have for me personally
so that my voice/opinion cannot be ignored easily and that I am prepared for clarification
and conflict resolution discussions with peers and people in other roles.
“Value lead” is a term from the IEEE 7000 standard1. Checkout the standard or the role description in the ESE repository2 for a detailed description of this role.
As a value lead,
I want to help product managers, DevOps teams, and other system stakeholders to
identify, elicit and prioritize their respective ethical values - both obvious and hidden ones,
both present and future ones, both easy-to-agree and possibly controversial ones,
so that all project members are optimally supported in developing systems that foster positive values
and reduce any negative impact of values.
As a value lead (a term from IEEE Std. 7000),
I want to help product managers, DevOps teams, and other system stakeholders to discuss
and document the positive and negative consequences of ethical values in the context of the system under construction
along with possible remedial actions
so that economic impact such as sales losses and reputation damage can be avoided
and risks of different kinds be managed and mitigated.
Note that the above collection of user stories is not exhaustive/complete. Feel free to contribute your ideas.
IEEE Standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns during System Design, 2021, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9536679 ↩
Value Lead, ESE repository, https://github.com/ethical-se/ese-practices/blob/main/roles/ESE-ValueLead.md ↩