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May 1, 2005
Expertise in Professional Software Design: A Process Study by Sabine Sonnentag
In this study, the author wanted to examine expertise in software designers. He argues expert programmers should exhibit the following characteristics:
- Problem comprehension - create an adequate representation of the program
- Planning - decisions about future steps and their sequence are made
- Feedback processing - actively searching for feedback
- Task focus - spend less time on task-irrelevant cognitions
- Use of visualizations - use of sketches and diagrams
- Knowledge of strategies
To prove whether these characteristics actually appear in experts, he carried out the following experiment:
Method: 40 professional software designers participated in the study. The first task was to differentiate the high and moderate performers from the subjects. This was done through peer-nomination. The subjects had to design a software system that controls the movement of a lift system. The subjects were asked to think aloud.
Results: High performers spent more time on feedback processing and less time on task-irrelevant cognitions. They produced more visualizations and knew more about strategies. Across all phases, high performers spent less time analyzing requirements, suggesting they were able to build program representation more quickly. High performers did not show more planning ahead than moderate performers. Length of experience did not explain performance differences with the subjects in this particular study.
This study is relevant because it examines the attributes of an expert software designer. It provided a hypothesis for each of these attributes and tried to prove whether they were actually true in practice. Also, I thought it was interesting how they described expertise not merely but length of experience, but more importantly high performance.
Posted by Justin at May 1, 2005 10:30 PM
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