Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise

TL;DR

This paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual theory of software development expertise based on survey data and literature, highlighting factors influencing expertise and its potential decline, with insights into self-assessment and experience.

Contribution

It introduces the first integrated theory of software development expertise, combining empirical data and literature to explain its properties and development.

Findings

Expertise self-assessments are context-dependent

Experience does not necessarily correlate with expertise

Factors influencing expertise formation and decline are identified

Abstract

Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory describes important properties of software development expertise and which factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers' expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not necessarily related to expertise.