Expertise in Software Design

In this chapter, we review research evidence on expertise in software design, computer programming, and related tasks. Research in this domain is particularly interesting because it refers both to rather general features and processes associated with expertise (e.g., knowledge representation, problem-solving strategies) and to speci£c characteristics of high performers in an economically relevant real-world setting. Therefore, in this chapter we draw on literature from various £elds, mainly from cognitive psychology, but also from work and organizational psychology and from the software-design literature within computer science. Our chapter is organized as follows: In the first main section we provide a brief description of the domain and give an overview of tasks in software development. Next} we briefly describe the expertise concept and distinguish between a conceptualization of expertise as years of experience and expertise as high performance. The third main section is the core part of this chapter. In this section, we review empirical research on expertise in tasks such as software design, programming, program comprehension, testing, and debugging. Moreover, we describe how expert performers differ from non-experts with respect to knowledge as well as communication and cooperation processes. In the £nal section, we present directions for future research and discuss some practical implications.