Defining a concept is the first step towards understanding it. I define assessment as:

Assessment is the process of understanding a given situation to support decision making.

This definition is similar to the one of reverse engineering, yet it is significantly different:

Reverse engineering is the process of analyzing a subject system to create representations of the system at a higher level of abstraction.
Chickofsky & Cross

They are both processes, but the main difference is given by the goal. Essentially, the artifacts that result from reverse engineering are high level views that do away with details. In other words, reverse engineering is concerned with the technicality of producing the views.

On the other hand, the end goal of assessment is decision making. To get to decisions we do need the summaries provided by the high level views because we cannot deal with all the details of the system by ourselves. But, those views are not enough. We need to take the extra step of interpreting them. Thus, reverse engineering is part of the overall assessment process.

The second difference stems from the input to the process. In reverse engineering, we talk about a system. In assessment we talk about a situation. While a system is well defined, a situation can be vaguer. Why should we allow for this? Because humans are not machines. While it is great to deal with clear-bounded systems, in reality we most often cannot define the situations we encounter with outmost exactness.

Reverse engineering has been a concern for a long time. It was and still is a challenging task, and it managed to capture our imagination and efforts for several decades. Some great tools and approaches came out of all this.

But, that is not enough. It turns out that all this good work is rendered almost useless when facing fuzzy and contextual real-world problems. If we want to have a real impact we have to go the extra mile and leave the beauty of clearcut systems. We have to accept the inconvenient untidiness of reality.

Enter assessment. A new path toward an exciting promise.