Software and product development

Capability level: Established — delivered in prior roles and independent projects.

This is the longest-standing part of the practice. It covers designing, building, and maintaining software, interfaces, workflows, and internal tools around the people who have to operate them.

Typical work

• Web applications, interfaces, and internal tools
• Workflow and integration work across existing systems
• Technical documentation and handover material
• Accessibility and performance work on systems already in use

What the engineering discipline carries over

Two questions decide whether a system survives contact with an organization: who will use it, and who will maintain it after delivery. Those questions shape the research work as much as the software, which is the connection described in Approach.

Built to be inherited

Scope includes documentation, tests, ownership, and maintenance requirements, not only the delivered feature. The simplest workable system is preferred where an organization has limited engineering capacity, and the routines that keep it running are covered by Documentation and workflow improvement.

Non-negotiables

Accessibility requirements belong in the design and test plan rather than a final review pass, as set out in the testing approach. Where the work is mainly about recurring reporting rather than a product, scope it with Reporting and decision systems instead.