The goal of assessment is decision making. While decisions is a generic term covering a large spectrum, from broad strategic decisions to detailed decisions about the impact of changing a particular component, they all share a common problem: they require accurate information fast. Even if this activity is not recognized as important, several studies report as much as 50% of the development effort being dedicated to it. This state of facts requires an overhaul.

The humane assessment method starts from the following observations that prompt a complete rethinking of software assessment:

  • assessment is ultimately a human activity,
  • humans require analysis tools to process large systems fast, and
  • the tools must be customized because software systems are highly contextual.

As a result, the humane assessment method considers crafting analysis tools as an important explicit activity, and makes it part of the daily development. To make this general method effective you must tackle it along three lines:

  1. Embed it in the overall development process.
  2. Integrate it in the organization through explicit roles.
  3. Make crafting analysis tools practical by understanding their economics and by adopting an appropriate tooling infrastructure, such as the Moose analysis platform.

This method is needed in any software project, and it works in any development process.