Making Software

Using Qualitative Methods in Practice

While qualitative methods are usually applied in research settings, they can be incredibly useful in practice. In fact, they are useful in any setting where you don’t know the entire universe of possible answers to a question. And in software engineering, when is that not the case? Software testers might use qualitative methods to answer questions about inefficiencies in the human aspects of a testing procedure; project managers can use qualitative methods to understand how the social dimensions of their team might be impacting productivity. Designers, developers, and requirements engineers can use qualitative methods to get a deeper understanding of the users they serve, ensuring a closer fit between user needs and the feature list. Any time you need to analyze the dynamics between who, what, when, where, how and why, qualitative methods can help.

Using qualitative methods is a lot like being a good detective or journalist: the point is to uncover truth, and tell a story people can trust—but also realize that there are usually many truths and many perspectives. How you go about uncovering these perspectives depends a lot on the situation. In particular, you need an instinct for the social context of what you want to understand, so you know whom you can trust, what their biases are, and how their motives might affect your sleuthing. Only with this knowledge can you decide what combination of direct observation, shadowing, interviews, document ...