Identifying the difficulties of object-oriented development

Abstract

Identifying the perceptions of developers that use object-oriented (OO) system development techniques is necessary to understand why they are described as difficult to learn and use. Professional developers with a broad range of experience were asked to share their perceptions of the issues that contribute to the difficulties of using OO techniques. The 67 developers primarily were from the tele-communications and systems consulting industries in a large metropolitan area. Seventeen small groups of developers with similar levels of experience completed a 2.5-h group cognitive mapping process using a group support system (GSS). Each GSS session consisted of activities to identify difficult issues, define categories that classify the issues by similarity, rate the importance of the categories for causing difficulties, and identify causal relationships among the categories to form a cognitive map that represents the group’s shared perceptions of the difficulties of using OO techniques. The 1279 issues identified were organized into 141 categories by the 17 groups. These 141 group-generated categories were merged to identify a set of 9 overall categories to allow comparisons of perceptions across groups and levels of experience. The results reveal a common “core” of difficult issues associated with using OO techniques that was shared by novices, intermediates, and experts. Overall category group cognitive maps reveal substantial differences in the causal relationships perceived by novices and experts.