John Grundy

John’s co-authored research examines how practitioners recognise and manage defects connected to diverse user needs. Aimed at software practitioners, including teams reporting and fixing bugs, it offers recommendations for better user feedback and clearer defect classification. This matters because a system can present serious difficulties for particular users even when those difficulties are not apparent to everyone.

John Grundy is Senior Deputy Dean (Faculty of IT), Director of the HumaniSE Lab and Professor of Software Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. With research spanning requirements, modelling and evaluation, John examines how diverse user needs and abilities shape software quality, highlighting defects that can be critical for one person while remaining invisible to another.

John co-authored ‘How do software practitioners perceive human-centric defects?’, investigating problems linked to human factors such as language, age and disability. Based on 50 survey responses and 10 practitioner interviews, the study identified systemic gaps in recognising, reporting and tracking these issues. Practical recommendations focus on improving feedback from end-users, standardising defect classification and applying automation so testing teams can routinely identify needs that might otherwise be overlooked.