Needs assessment of software systems graduates
No Thumbnail Available
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Doctoral thesis (monograph)
Checking the digitized thesis and permission for publishing
Instructions for the author
Instructions for the author
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Authors
Date
2005-12-09
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
242
Series
Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Laboratory of Information Processing Science. A, Teknillinen korkeakoulu, tietotekniikan osasto, tietojenkäsittelyopin laboratorio. A, 43
Abstract
The research problem of the present thesis was: What technical skills do graduates from specialization in Software Systems need? Triangulation; that is, several research methods and data sources were used to solve this problem. The largest part of the thesis consisted of three questionnaires where Finnish software developers (N = 11), professors and lecturers (N = 19), and Master's students (N = 24) evaluated the importance of 42 subjects and skills such as discrete mathematics and object-oriented programming. The second largest part of the thesis comprised two content analyses of job advertisements targeted at software developers. A trend analysis for the years 1990-2004 and a cross-sectional analysis of the year 2004 were conducted. In both analyses, the purpose was to find the most common technical skills sought in American job advertisements. In addition, four smaller content analyses were conducted. Documents for these content analyses were the degree requirements of 31 top-level American research universities, and the internship reports, course catalog, and Master's theses of the Helsinki University of Technology. A concept analysis of the concept "software systems" was also carried out. The main contributions of the present thesis are as follows: The thesis is so far the most versatile triangulation in the area in question. In particular, the content analysis of American degree requirements and the concept analysis of "software systems" were novel approaches. The thesis provided findings that the requirements for software developers have required greater versatility during the past 15 years. Todd, McKeen, and Gallupe reported similar change in 1995 for the 1970-1990 period. However, it was interesting to know if this trend had continued after 1990. According to the summarized results, the following technical subjects or skills were evaluated as being important: compilers, concurrent programming, data structures and algorithms, database management systems, distributed systems, object-oriented programming, operating systems, procedural programming, and software architectures. Most of these subjects or skills had already been reported as being important for software developers, for example, in the survey conducted by Lethbridge in 1998. The importance of physics and continuous mathematics was evaluated as being low. Previously, Lethbridge reported similar findings. In the job advertisement analyses of the present thesis, technical skills were analyzed in a more detailed manner than in the previous analyses on average. In particular, some results concerning distributed technology skills were new and more detailed than previously published.Description
Keywords
needs assessment, software developer, specialization in Software Systems, technical skills