This earliest recorded attempt to regulate the engineering profession reminds us, in the bluntest way possible, that the paramount purpose of engineering and engineering design is to serve the user. One would assume that the engineer’s responsibility to users is so self evident that it goes without saying. Various professional engineering societies have inculcated this into the core of the rules that regulate the conduct of their members.

However, in the relatively young discipline of software engineering, this has not yet fully permeated the professional culture. Part of it is due to the essential nature of the software: like no other engineering medium, software provides the shortest path from concept to reality. With no metal to bend, heavy weights to lift, or large teams of people to mobilize, creativity is practically unhampered. In the heady and seductive process of embodying ideas through software, users are often forgotten or relegated to secondary status. In some cases, they are even seen as a distraction whose idiosyncrasies merely get in the way of ‘elegant and clean’ design. Software developers are notorious for their impatience with anything that separates them from programming – the medium has become the message. Symptomatically, the terms ‘hacking’ and ‘hacker’ have no equivalent in any other engineering discipline.

It is interesting to note the dramatic impact that the concept of ‘use case’ has had on the software community. This idea, introduced by Ivar Jacobson and his colleagues a little over a decade ago, was lauded as revolutionary. Its essence lies in the formal introduction of the concept of a user (an ‘actor’) into the software design process. (The layperson can hardly be blamed for wondering ‘what took them so long?’ Hammurabi knew this almost 4000 years ago.)