A Longitudinal Study of Information Systems Developers' Understanding of Software Development Concepts During a Transition from Structured to Object-Oriented Development

Object-oriented development (OOD) has attracted great interest in MIS due to the belief that OOD makes it easier to develop and maintain software and achieve the benefits of software reuse. However, the transition from a structured development (SD) to an OOD methodology may be especially challenging and some argue that SD knowledge may interfere with the ability to learn OOD. We assessed a team of developers’ understanding of SD and OOD concepts via a survey administered at the beginning of a development project and one year later. Developers increased their understanding of some OOD concepts, but these were associated with increases in understanding of SD concepts. This challenges the idea that developers must “unlearn” SD concepts to adopt OOD. We also found that developer’s mental models were highly consistent with regard to SD and most OOD concepts at the beginning and end of the project.