This question is about the idea whether and how to introduce the idea of "Diversity" into the world of software engineering. The answer is simple: It fully depends what your understanding of "Diversity" is. I think that there is a lack of such definition.

If your understanding of "Diversity" is simply, that you should not discriminate anybody for his skin colour or religion but treat everyone equally, and if your understanding is simply, that you should consider as many perspectives as possible in your design, especially the perspective of your customers of course, then the anwer is "Yes".

But if your understanding of "Diversity" is an ideological one, then the answer is "No". If you do not care about your customers in the first place, and if you do not want to treat everyone equally, but if you care about the question, how much blacks or hispanic people are in your team, then you left the sphere of human behaviour and rationality, of Humanism and Enlightenment upon which the Western world is built (and rightly so).

If you actively discriminate e.g. white or Asian people to have more "diversity", then you are acting immorally. If you do not want to treat everybody equally, but if you want to achieve "equity", i.e. equality in outcome not in chances, then you are acting immorally. And if you neglect the perspective of your customer, you are acting irrationally. Then, your software project will fail. Because the software has to please the customers in the first place, not anybody else. And software teams are social structures. If you establish intentional unequality in social environments to reach "equity", then the social system will react in a bad way. The feeling of injustice will destroy the social cohesion. And the experience of injustice and that making efforts is not rewarded (because of "equity") will destroy the workplace morale and working happiness. In the end, no one will be better off with this understanding of "Diversity", it is a clear loose-loose situation.

Thorwald Franke

Thank you for the reply

Notes: For clarification

(1) The question is restricted to a particular context -- Diversity in the developer (Programmer) teams.

(2) You said: "The idea of whether and how to introduce the idea of "Diversity" into the world of software engineering." which is a wrong interpretation of my question entirely. Software engineering is a significant and innovative domain of knowledge that is invalid. Why?

Developer team diversity is considered "Human. Interaction" of how the team works together.

Therefore, I would change your statement as follows:

"The idea of whether and how to introduce the idea of "Diversity" into the world of Project management or team behavior in organization culture "

First: Frankly speaking, you generalized my questions on Diversity to a huge Space.

Second: Diversity is an enduring concept; we all live in diverse societies worldwide. We do not need to mention country names because of the culture of any country or organization to avoid getting into many problematic issues, and there is no need to get there.

Third: We discovered over 50 innovative keys, over 100 pieces of information about Diversity, and more than 4000 concepts.

Let me introduce you to a few of the questions about Diversity.

1) What are the positive impacts of Diversity?

2) What are the functional requirements of Diversity

3) What are the non-functional requirements of Diversity?

4) What are the different behavior models of Diversity?

5) What is the role of Diversity in different scenarios?

6) What is the responsibility of Diversity in different scenarios?

7) What is the "rule of Conduct" of Diversity?

Does anyone have answers to the above questions?

I don't think so.

Fourth: You made a lot of self-assumptions that are wrong and false.

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In my experience in many societies, universities, and businesses for over 50 years, I saw and still see on the increase that many people claim that they are the leaders of the promotor of Diversity and are racist and discriminate. I am documenting all these instances in my book on Diversity. Many Diversity leaders play evil roles as very nasty racists, bigots, and chauvinists. They cause catastrophic damage to many humans, societies, universities, and businesses.

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Diversity is one of the most critical issues we face worldwide, and we must collaborate to show the unified facts and knowledge about "DIVERSITY."

I would love to invite you to write a book on Unified Diversity.

Mohamed Fayad

You say: "Diversity is one of the most critical issues we face worldwide" -- No, certainly not. Humanism and Enlightenment are the most critical issues worldwide. Always were. Always will.

You ask for positive impacts of Diversity. -- But why did you not ask for negative impacts of Diversity? Aren't there any?

You complain that "Diversity leaders" are hypocrites. -- There is a simple reason for this. Because it is a mistake in itself to attribute a central role to Diversity. There are more important things than diversity. Making Diversity overrule rationality and realism and human behaviour, and making Diversity eclipsing Humanism and Enlightenment, is an approach which is doomed to fail. Somehow you have not understood this simple fact, and now you are complaining that something, which cannot work, does not work.

This all reminds me of socialists complaining that so many socialist leaders are hypocrites, and discussing how they can make socialism work. They can't. It is not possible. There are more important things than social welfare.

Thorwald Franke

Self-assumption again, and you missed understanding my reply. Let's start again.

The original issue concerns human interaction and the diversity among developer teams, and you are insisting on generalizing the issue of diversity in any society. Diversity is common and has no adverse impacts, but some communities, including you, make it a big deal and fear it.

I will stick with the question, and if you like a public debate on this issue or other self-assumptions of yours, I will be happy to do it.

Mohamed Fayad

a) Oh ...... it is clearly you who is making a really big deal of "Diversity", not me. It is you who says "Diversity is one of the most critical issues we face worldwide".

b) Why do you think that I "fear" Diversity? I only said that there are more important things, and that there is no problem with Diversity if we work with an unideological definition of Diversity. Somehow, you don't like this approach. You stubbornly ignore my warning before ideological definitions of Diversity. Isn't ignorance a sign of fear?

c) And it seems obvious that you prefer an ideological definition, otherwise you wouldn't have a problem with my words, and otherwise you wouldn't express the most ideological belief that Diversity would never have any adverse impacts. Did you ever hear of "the dose makes the poison"? You can exaggerate everything, even a good thing like Diversity.

d) You complain: "The original issue concerns human interaction and the diversity among developer teams, and you are insisting on generalizing the issue of diversity in any society." -- I provided a complete answer for the case of the developer team. Software projects which put the focus on Diversity instead of other more important things will fail, for many reasons.

Making Diversity overrule rationality and realism and human behaviour, and making Diversity eclipsing Humanism and Enlightenment, is an approach which is doomed to fail.

Thorwald Franke

You said: "I provided a complete answer for the case of the developer team. Software projects focusing on Diversity instead of other more important things will fail for many reasons."

Excellent!

But,

(1) This issue is related to project management and organizational culture. It has nothing to do with the Software Engineering (SWE) field of

knowledge and this has been clear in the question and my reply to you.

(2) If you insist on the issue related to SWE. What other essential things related to the SWE body of knowledge and practice about Diversity?

Mohamed Fayad

It is time for the opinion of others. What their understanding is. Whether they find your statements clear, etc.

I don't understand the connection between diversity and whether or not software engineering should shrink to only include programming. And are you talking about the practice of software engineering in the abstract or software engineering as an important discipline?

Diversity serves an important societal purpose. It has to do with keeping a wider perspective and multiple viewpoints where that matters in the intersection of software and the public to be served, directly or indirectly.

How that, and the experience of participants, interplays with the levels at which software-based systems are built and relied upon is a bit higher level than "programming" and also "software engineering." I suspect that it might be useful to see how companies in the computer game industry are addressing that. This is also a pervasive matter that arises in entertainment, media, government, healthcare and other areas that engage the public.

Where I live, I currently have 5 different online "my chart" systems of healthcare providers, all of varying degrees of terribleness. I assure you this has nothing to do with programming or software engineering. They also claim to interconnect to varying degrees and it doesn't work, even between two of them that are part of the same hospital system. So I am responsible for keeping all of them current and uptodate on my history, medications, etc.

This is not a programming or software engineering problem. It is definitely a competence problem.