An artifact-centric framework for software development skills

While the specific knowledge, skills and abilities needed to develop software can be determined, it is much more difficult to decide what skill set is required for any given software development role. This paper suggests that progress may be made if, instead of trying to relate knowledge, skills or abilities to individual roles, efforts are made to understand what knowledge, skills and abilities are required to create and use the artifacts associated with software development. To this end, a framework incorporating two relationships is presented: The first relates software development artifacts to organizational functions, while the second relates knowledge, skills and abilities to different phases of an artifact’s lifecycle. This framework leads to a new taxonomy of skills.