Understanding software engineering expertise

Carty, Lara Kirsten (2025) Understanding software engineering expertise. Doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to explore expertise in software engineering. It presents two studies that advance the understanding of this area. With a projected 45 million software engineers thought to be operating globally by 20230, understanding the expertise in this role is vital. The first study, a systematic literature review (SLR), followed best practice methodology to understand the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) of expert software engineers. 1,012 papers were identified through a systematic search, of which six were included in the final full paper review. Findings indicated that expert software engineers are likely to have higher cognitive ability; initiate, change and resolve more software tasks; exhibit higher levels of knowledge sharing, extraversion, and conscientiousness; and exhibit lower levels of individualistic language. Critically, it was identified that broad based skills and abilities that cut across languages, platforms and tools were of most relevance to software engineering expertise. Whilst there was promising evidence for KSAOs of expert software engineers, it was identified that the literature was at a nascent stage with software engineering expertise being inconsistently operationalised across the existing literature base. The SLR identified an opportunity to utilise a qualitative methodology to elicit the cognitive expertise directly from expert software engineers. The second study used the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis (ACTA) method which has been employed in other expertise research. Interviews were conducted with a sample of Chief Technology Officers, with a minimum of 10 years software engineering experience to ensure that software engineering expertise was consistently operationalised. Results indicate that there are aspects of the software engineering lifecycle that are most cognitively demanding and there are expert: novice differences in how these tasks are executed. Overall, this thesis advances our understanding of software engineering expertise in organisational settings. Specifically, this thesis presents several novel contributions. First, it presents the first SLR to explore KSAOs of expert software engineers, synthesising the existing literature (study 1). Second, this thesis conducted empirical research from an occupational psychology perspective which was novel in what is an inter-disciplinary area currently dominated by computer science and business literature (study 2). Third, the empirical research was conducted with a UK focus in an area that has been dominated by USA located research to date and forth, it applied the ACTA methodology to a population who have yet to be researched in this way. The thesis generated a conceptual model of software engineering expertise which advances our knowledge on software engineering expertise and enables other researchers to use this as a basis for further research. Taken together, the results of the first and second study contribute to our understanding of software engineering expertise. Implications for theory, research and practice are discussed.

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