Pilot training focuses significantly on human factors. I strongly believe that this aspect is critical to every realm. It’s just that not all of them grant it as much focus as some industries do.

Software is more pervasive today than it has ever been. Just about everything in our lives has some element of software. It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to state that few, if any, aspects of human life remain untouched by software code. This translated to higher stakes and increased risk from a software engineering perspective. Over the past decades, software has gone from helping with back-end data processing (remember EDP?) to real-time data streams; from supporting passive payroll processing to quadruple redundancy avionics and active-autonomous transport. That’s a big leap indeed.

However, when we think about software engineering methods, tools, and the inherent cognitive nature of software, much of it still relies on what we started with – the most important one being the human element. Software teams need to be trained to look at evolving complexity, character and impact of the software they build. However good the tools, the engineering or quality assurance methods, human factors will make the difference between success and failure.