Return to search

Role of Domain Ignorance in Software Development

Several have reported observations that sometimes ignorance of the domain in a software development project is useful for promoting the elicitation of tacit assumptions and out- of-the-box ideas. This thesis reports work putting the observation to two empirical tests. First, a survey was conducted among software development managers of varying experience to determine what software development activities they thought were at least helped by domain ignorance. Second, transcripts from fourteen interviews of presumably-domain- ignorant immigrants to new software development projects at one large company were examined to determine if the activities performed by those with the smoothest immigrations were activities that are at least helped by domain ignorance. The conclusions are that ignorance plays an important role in software development but there are a lot of other factors that influence immigration smoothness.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:WATERLOO/oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/5944
Date January 2011
CreatorsMehrotra, Gaurav
Source SetsUniversity of Waterloo Electronic Theses Repository
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation

Page generated in 0.0024 seconds