As the Interdisciplinary Software Engineering Framework
acknowledges, humans “in the loop” is an important part of
software engineering practice and research. Software engineering
results are created via complex human systems, and the success or
failure of that work is largely determined by the interactions of
people, rather than by technical aspects. Thus, if we wish our
discipline to be more effective, we should also look outside
technical fields and investigate what we can learn from domains
that have a successful history with human systems.
Aikido is one such domain that I have found especially useful as a
software practitioner and as a teacher. People see aikido as a
martial art, which it is, but often fail to see it as centered around
conflict resolution, which it also is [2]. This focus is one of the
reasons why aikido can contribute to the practice of software
engineering.
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