Una proyección de la Cuenta Satélite de Turismo Experimental 2000-2007

The establishment of web development (this term will be used in preference to web engineering as it relates more specifically to the discipline surrounding the systematization of the work) as distinct from programming should be seen in the context of rapidly evolving technologies and broader societal adoption of these. As with the programmer archetype this portrait will focus upon the reported characteristics of web developers and the work in which they are engaged, drawing from academic and industry literature and from the O*NET Occupation Requirements and SOC data. There are areas of similarity in terms of the characteristics and job role of the web developer archetype and the programmer archetype, which is unsurprising given the shared heritage of these two professions and their chronological development. Much of the early literature focuses upon the need for structure and common protocol for web development activities emanating from the experiences of adoption and adaption of new technologies within the early programmer community. Ahmad et al (2005) suggest that web engineering and software engineering could be likened to siblings. To extend this simile further the web developer could perhaps be viewed as a younger sibling who has benefited from the experiences and learning of the older child. The second child has the benefit of this already acquired knowledge (albeit in a different context) and as such differs from the older sibling in experience and temperament - themes which will be explored further using the aforementioned sources in constructing the archetype of the web developer.

Literature relating to web developers and web development is concentrated around the late 1990’s and early 2000’s as the discipline begins to emerge with the development of the Internet and web- based technologies. There is little literature devoted to the subject after this time as a broad

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acceptance develops of the technology and associated jobs roles and skills. Therefore much of this archetype is derived from literature from the early transition phase supported by the observations within the O*NET and SOC data.

In the early web development literature the dominant theme is that of the breadth of skill required to perform this role which is illustrated by Tilley and Huang (1999)

“...To be successful in today’s net-centric and Web-enabled world, one now needs to know a lot about a lot…There are now so many different aspects to application software that there is a (re)emergence of the renaissance person, one who is comfortable operating in several disciplines…The complexity of system construction and evolution in a Web-Oriented world is driving this renaissance”

(Tilley and Huang, 1999; p1) This renaissance ‘person’ is very much perceived by Tilly and Huang (1999) and their contemporaries to require knowledge of a wide range of technologies and skills relating to the web. Many of the descriptions of web development (and web developers) refer to it as being multidisciplinary which is seen as being a defining characteristic of this new role (Murugesan et al 1999). The suggestion that the web-based systems would be ‘uniquely challenging’ particularly with regards to the nature of ‘real-time interaction, complexity, changeability’ (Ginige and Murugesan, 2001; p22) would therefore necessitate that the web development role has complementary characteristics. This is identified in the SOC (2010) which describes the typical tasks of Web Design and Development Professionals as inclusive of design and development of the website including web interfaces for relational database systems, methods of website security and recovery, testing and monitoring. However, there is also recognition that Web Development goes beyond the requirement to be able to use multiple technologies in that there is a significant necessity to be able to interpret business requirements and to act as translators of these for technical purposes. In the SOC (2010) this is included as ‘liaises with the internal/external client in order to define the requirements for the website’ (SOC, 2010; p63).

Taylor et al (2001) identified that web development differed significantly from ’traditional Information Systems’ with different audiences and purposes, shorter development times and shorter product life-cycles. As such, the study of 20 organisations (across a range of types with over 50% of the organisations having distinct web developer roles) which examined the “full range of skills and knowledge that web site developers may be called upon to use” (p 452) sought to determine a skill set required for web development. Interviews were undertaken with IT staff engaged in web development work using questions derived from literature which suggested, largely without empirical support, the types of skill and knowledge which might be required by these workers. These

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included technical skills, but of equal significance in the study is the requirement for business and analytical skills, although this was only considered to be significant to 20% of the interviewees and as it was a qualitative study inferences of importance should not necessarily be made based upon quantitative measures. This was an early attempt to classify the skills required in this occupation which has been borne out by the job classification exercises discussed earlier in the SOC and the O*NET classification system. The analytical skills segment of the Venn diagram (see Fig 6.2) produced from the research study included requirements analysis, cost-benefit analysis and interpreting user requirements.

Figure 6.2 Skill sets required for web site development

The latter skill was also shared by the business skill set which included understanding business terminology, business procedures and legislation. It is evident in the literature, which is limited in its empirical content, that the need for communication and interpreting ideas is considered to be a key component of web development or perhaps, given the time frame of the literature it may be more appropriate to suggest that it was predicted that these skills would be of importance to the role.

Design Programming Testing

Debugging Security Interpreting user requirements Requirements analysis Cost benefit analysis Business terminology Business procedures Legislation Technical Business Analytical

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This need for broader business skills is also recognised by Taylor (2006) who identified ‘Web Competencies for IT students’ determining that, in addition to essential technical expertise, they also require skills in ‘…teamwork, communication (both verbal and oral) and commitment to lifelong learning due to the rapidly changing nature of the field’ (p1). This would suggest that a developer needs to be accomplished in technical and interpersonal skills and also be oriented towards continual learning. Pressman (2000) also emphasises the need for this broader business acumen, specifically the ability to engage with customers as early as at the formulation stage of the project which precedes the technical analysis stage. This ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and to constantly communicate with customers throughout the duration of the project is seen as one of the key facets of the web developer’s role. The SCALE21 research supports the observations made by the aforementioned authors. As previously mentioned in the programmer archetype the project used data from 52 respondents to determine what skills/abilities were felt to be of importance to each of the IT occupations. The most significant principle components (those with a mean score of 4.5 or above) reported by web developers were found, in descending order to be technical understanding, communication and verbal reasoning supporting the literature outlined previously. An additional ‘dominant characteristic’ for web development was flexibility which was determined to be one of the core skills. This may be explained by the requirement for web developers to interact frequently with stakeholders (internal and external) and the observation from the contemporary literature that the rapidity of technological change was a prominent feature of this role. The observation of the authors from the data collected was that web development was a specialised occupation which exhibited strong technical expertise but that this could be attributed to the nascence of the occupation. The report also identifies that the dominant characteristics of web developers are a higher order combination of a range of the core activities which is more akin to work such as strategy development. This could be linked to the breadth of the role in terms of customer contact, business knowledge and boundary spanning behaviours.

Contemporaneous literature would suggest that the web developer was a lone figure, the sole interpreter of business requirements, tester of applications, and designer of the User Interface dealing with projects and a wide range of stakeholders with the required immediacy (Pressman, 2001). This may have been an appropriate assumption in the early days of web development but in large organisations, where web developers are working as part of development teams the broad roles which were initially identified are now specialisms of web development, for example teams may have a User Interface specialist, a tester, a project manager etc. Ginige and Murugesan in 2001 predicted this, with the anticipated increase in the size of projects, there would be a greater need to

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have teams of people of “different types and levels of skill to work together necessitating distributed, collaborative development” (p23). Whilst it is evidently the case that some larger organisations require development teams with a range of differentiated skills it is also evident that small to medium sized organisations require the ‘traditional’ web developer who fulfils the initially identified multi/interdisciplinary role.

As a result of the refinement of the archetypes, the KWCM and hypotheses are now reconceptualised to reflect the literature reviewed. The hypotheses are established to reflect the differences between programmers and web developers in the context of the KWCM. As they are new and fundamentally different hypotheses, they are numbered as a continuation of the original set.