Operationalizing Human Values in Software Engineering: A Survey

Abstract

Human values (e.g., pleasure, privacy, and social justice) are what a person or a society considers important. Inability to address them in software-intensive systems can result in numerous undesired consequences (e.g., financial losses) for individuals and communities. Various solutions (e.g., methodologies, techniques) are developed to help "operationalize values in software". The ultimate goal is to ensure building software (better) reflects and respects human values. In this survey, "operationalizing values" is referred to as the process of identifying human values and translating them to accessible and concrete concepts so that they can be implemented, validated, verified, and measured in software. This paper provides a deep understanding of the research landscape on operationalizing values in software engineering, covering 51 primary studies. It also presents an analysis and taxonomy of 51 solutions for operationalizing values in software engineering. Our survey reveals that most solutions attempt to help operationalize values in the early phases (requirements and design) of the software development life cycle. However, the later phases (implementation and testing) and other aspects of software development (e.g., "team organization") still need adequate consideration. We outline implications for research and practice and identify open issues and future research directions to advance this area.

Values@Runtime: An Adaptive Framework for Operationalising Values

“…The role of values in the design of software technology has received significant recent attention [9]. A thorough review is beyond the scope of this short paper.…”

“…Several approaches promote the importance of considering human values during the development of software systems and we refer interested readers to the comprehensive recent survey paper [9]. The authors highlight that existing approaches support values operationalisation in early stages of software development (requirements and design), but later stages (implementation and testing) still need attention.…”

“…Operationalising values is defined as "the process of identifying human values and translating them to accessible and concrete concepts so that they can be implemented, validated, verified, and measured in software" [9]. Our framework complements the above definition to represent, monitor, match, align, recommend, and reflect on values during runtime operation of user-centric software systems.…”

“…Values are well studied in human-computer interaction and information systems [7] [8]. Existing approaches focus on early stages of the development process [9], with little attention given to the satisfaction of values in deployed software systems.…”

Towards a Research Agenda for Understanding and Managing Uncertainty in Self-Adaptive Systems

“…We refer to humans as individuals, groups of people, and society in general. More specifically, we consider that humans engaging in system interactions may be motivated by personal and individual needs, values, and ethical norms [12,39,70,79,81]. These aspects may be shared among larger communities, regardless of whether these community relations have been regulated.…”