exploring the relationship between social science and software development methodologies: a blog by Pascal Belouin

The central perspective that underlies most of the articles featured on this blog could be summarised by the notion of ‘software as discourse’. I would like to give an overview of what this concept means to me from a theoretical point of view, on which assumptions it relies, and what it entails from a methodological [...]

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Here are the slides from a talk I did in London at dev8d, where I tried to focus on the practical aspects of things. I hope some developers around here find it interesting! Dev8D Presentation Pascal Belouin View more presentations from Pascal Belouin.

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‘Because emergence is the foundation of our approach to theory building, a researcher cannot enter an investigation with a list of preconceived concepts, a guiding theoretical framework, or a well though out design’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p. 34). Although this citation from Strauss and Corbin could make sense in the context of a practical, [...]

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§140 · March 17, 2010 · Practice, Theory · 1 comment · Tags: , , , , ,


During the course of fieldwork, the ethnographer can take on a number of different roles, which could be classified in regards to the degree of one’s involvement with the population he or she is studying. For instance, according to Junker (1960) and Gold’s (1958) model, the roles available to the researcher range from the ‘complete [...]

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§125 · March 16, 2010 · Practice · 2 comments · Tags: , , , , , , ,


Overview of the Proposed Research Topic During the relatively short history of software development, several development methods have been introduced, from the rather standard waterfall model derived from development methods that can be found in more ‘traditional’ industries (Royce, 1970), to solutions more adapted to the particular issues involved in software development such as user-centered [...]

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One of the main issues in the design of most commercial software products is what is commonly called ‘domain definition’. This activity could be roughly understood as the definition of the ‘objects’ and processes that the system will have to manage or provide support for. An interesting thing about domain definition is that it could [...]

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