The object-oriented paradigm is widely advocated and has been used in South African universities since the late 1990s. Object-oriented computer programming is based on the object-oriented paradigm where objects are the building blocks that combine data and methods in the same entity. Students' performance in object-oriented programming (OOP) is a matter of concern. In many cases they lack the ability to apply various supportive techniques in the process of programming. Efficient knowledge, skills and strategies are required during problem solving to enhance the programming process. It is often assumed that students implicitly and independently master these high-level knowledge, skills and strategies, and that teaching should focus on programming content and coding structures only. However, to be successful in the complex domain of OOP, explicit learning of both programming and supportive cognitive techniques is required. The objective of this study was to identify cognitive, metacognitive and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies used by successful and unsuccessful programmers in OOP. These activities were identified and evaluated in an empirical research study. A mixed research design was used, where both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to analyse participants' data. As a qualitative research practice, grounded theory was applied to guide the systematic collection of data and to generate theory. The findings suggest that successful programmers applied significantly more cognitive-, metacognitive- and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies, also using a greater variety, than the unsuccessful programmers. Since programming is complex, we propose a learning repertoire based on the approaches of successful programmers, to serve as an integrated framework to support novices in learning OOP. Various techniques should be used during problem solving and programming to meaningfully construct, explicitly reflect on, and critically select appropriate knowledge, skills and strategies so as to better understand, design, code and test programs. Some examples of teaching practices are also outlined as application of the findings of the study. / Mathematical Sciences / PhD. (Nathematics, Science and Tecnical Education)

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of acquisition and selection of software developers with an emphasis on current trends in this area. With regard to demand of labour market for software developers, HR professionals are required to take an innovative approach in their acquisition and selection. The personnel officers are also expected to have a basic orientation in technical terms and an overview of used technologies. The aim of this thesis is to identify significant changes in the acquisition and selection of software developers with an emphasis on current trends. The thesis presents the specifics of work in the software development industry, the position of the software developer within the ICT professions system, the category of software developers or the competency model of a software development worker. The theoretical sources are mainly current foreign articles. The thesis is supplemented by its own empirical survey, which verifies the experience of software developers with the application of the latest trends in the process of recruitment and selection of employers in the Czech Republic.

I början av år 2020 blev världen medveten om viruset covid-19 som orsakade en pandemi. Människor och företag har behövt anpassa sig till följd av den rådande situationen för att minska smittspridningen vilket har gjort att anställda tvingats till att arbeta på distans. Tidigare forskning har visat att det finns utmaningar att arbeta med agila metoder på distans där team eller delar av team arbetar distribuerat. Dock berör dessa forskningar till största del agila utvecklingsprojekt där IT-företag är verksamma globalt. Denna studie har undersökt hur arbetet bedrivs på distans där alla teammedlemmar arbetar distribuerat till följd av andra orsaker än att mjukvaruutvecklingen sker globalt. Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur anställda som ingår i teams upplever arbetet med agila utvecklingsprojekt som bedrivs på distans till följd av rådande pandemi. Därför har följande två frågeställningar formulerats “På vilka sätt upplever anställda som ingår i teams att interaktionen gentemot kollegor fungerar under den rådande pandemin?” och “Hur upplever anställda att arbetet på distans fungerar när de arbetar distribuerat till följd av covid-19?”. För att undersöka detta genomfördes åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med mjukvaruutvecklare som arbetar med Scrum inom ett medelstort IT-företag beläget i västra Sverige. Majoriteten av respondenterna har ingått i samma teams under flera år och har därför en bra relation till sina kollegor. Resultatet visade att arbetet med agila utvecklingsprojekt som bedrivs på distans till följd av pandemin har fungerat bra. Respondenterna har inte upplevt några svårigheter med att överföra Scrum till distans vilket kan bero på att de arbetat inom samma teams en längre tid. För att kunna utföra arbetet krävs det interaktion och kommunikation, något som respondenterna upplever som väl fungerande även på distans. Dock har den informella kommunikationen inte kunnat ersättas fullt ut av digitala verktyg, något som tidigare forskning lyft fram som en begränsning när team arbetar distribuerat. / At the beginning of 2020, the world became aware of the covid-19 virus that caused a pandemic. People and companies have had to adapt as a result of the current situation in order to reduce the spread of the virus, which has forced employees to work remotely. Previous research has shown that there are challenges in working with agile methods remotely where teams or parts of teams work distributed. However, these researches largely concern agile software development projects in which IT companies operate globally. This study has examined how the work is conducted remotely where all team members work distributed as a result of other reasons than the global software development. The purpose of this study has been to investigate how employees who are part of teams experience the work with agile development projects that are conducted remotely as a result of the current pandemic. Therefore, the following two research questions have been formulated as “In what ways do employees who are part of teams feel that the interaction with colleagues works during the current pandemic?” and “How do employees feel that remote work functions when they work distributed as a result of covid-19?”. To investigate this, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with software developers working with Scrum within a medium-sized IT company located in western Sweden. The majority of the respondents have been part of the same team for several years and therefore have a good relationship with their colleagues. The results showed that the work with agile development projects conducted remotely as a result of the pandemic has functioned well. The respondents have not experienced any difficulties intransferring Scrum in regards to distance work, which could depend on the fact that they have worked within the same team for a long period of time. In order to be able to perform the job, both interaction and communication are required, something that the respondents experienceas working well even remotely. However, informal communication has not been able to be fully replaced by digital tools, something that previous research highlights as a limitation when teams work distributed.

90年代的後期，敏捷式系統發展方法開始被倡導。相對於傳統的系統發展方法，敏捷式系統發展方法著重於回饋機制而非事前的計畫、以人為中心而非以流程為中心。這樣的方法希望能助於提高組織對回應市場、客戶的效率，進而提高效益。目前在商場中使用此方法做為開發工具的企業仍是少數，本研究希望透過探討敏捷式系統發展方法論的使用時機來進行教學，進而得知系統開發人員對於接受敏捷式系統發展方法的關鍵因素，並藉此了解該如何在企業中導入此方法。本研究發現除了使用此方法的能力會影響影響使用意圖之外，在內在因素方面也包含了公司結構與團隊因素，外部因素則包含了顧客與成功案例因素，這些都是接受敏捷式系統發展方法的關鍵因素。本研究希望根據以上的分析結果，提出敏捷式系統發展方法導入之建議，提供組織做為參考用。 / Awareness of agile system development methodologies (SDM) has grown among information systems development community in recent years. Many of their advocates consider the agile and the plan-driven SDMs polar opposites. Indeed there are circumstances where agile SDMs are more suitable than plan-driven SDMs. Yet, there have been few studies on understanding developers’ adoption intention. This paper takes an initial attempt to gauge new generation of software developers’ intention to select agile SDMs. To many of these developers, agile SDMs are relatively new if not unheard of, in order to assess their intention to choose such category of methodologies, this research first introduced the methodologies to a group of 21 IS-major graduate students and discussed how and when to use agile SDMs. Then a survey was conducted, which was comprised of two parts of questions: agile SDM self-efficacy and intention to use. PLS analysis results showed that agile SDM self-efficacy influence the intention to use through performance outcome expectation, personal outcome expectation, and affect. Although the relationship between self-efficacy and anxiety was not confirmed, anxiety does affect intention to use. The fact that direct relationships between all four emotive variables and the intention to use are established implies that in order to encourage the use of agile SDMs, the focus should be emotive variables, and that self efficacy may be just one of various ways to promote the favorable emotional states. In addition, these participates were invited to a three-round Delphi test and analytic hierarchy process to retrieved their concerns about accepting or rejecting agile SDMs. Ten key factors were extracted and categorized. Adding up the pros and cons, team dimension is the most important dimension, which explains individual first concerns about how the collaboration when using agile SDMs. Other than team dimension, customer, corporate structure, project, success cases and methodology dimensions were consistent with the literatures. Thus our study provides a critical understanding of the factors that affect new generation of software developers’ intention to select agile SDM.