The Need for Context in Software Engineering

Gail Murphy - UBC

Feb. 15, 2019, 2:30 p.m. - Feb. 15, 2019, 3:30 p.m.

Trottier 2120


Abstract: The development of a software system requires the orchestration of many different people using many different tools. Despite the need for a developer who is performing a task to understand the context in which that task is undertaken, the tools we imagine, build and provide to support software developers are typically isolated. Instead of the tools helping a developer work within the appropriate context, it is the developer who must bring the context to the tools.  In this talk, I will argue that the lack of context in the software engineering tools we build limits the effectiveness of developers and of our software development practices.
 
Speaker Bio: Gail C. Murphy is a Professor of Computer Science and Vice-President Research and Innovation at the University of British Columbia. She is also a co-founder at Tasktop Technologies inc. Her research interests are in improving the productivity of software developers and knowledge workers by giving them tools to identify, manage and coordinate the information that really matters for their work. She is a Fellow of the ACM and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is the recipient of the 2018 IEEE Computer Society Harlan D. Mills award and a previous recipient of an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Award and the AITO Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize.