Designing reliable institutional software

Institutional software succeeds or fails on ordinary days: the week before examinations, the morning a room becomes unavailable. These are the ideas we build around.

Make the rules explicit

Institutional work is governed by rules, some written down and some only known to experienced staff. Software should state those rules clearly enough that staff can read, question and change them.

Always allow a manual override

No rule set anticipates everything. Staff must be able to adjust a generated result by hand, and the software should make that easy instead of treating it as an error.

Produce something ready to use

A plan that still needs reformatting before it can be printed has only moved the work. Outputs should be ready for the notice board.

Expect late changes

Requirements change close to the deadline. Regenerating a plan after a change should take minutes, not an afternoon.

Our Automatic Examination Seating Plan Generator is built on these ideas.