Author(s)

Leshell Hatley¹, Maha Al-Freih², Brenda Bannan³

¹Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Coppin State University, Baltimore, USA.
²Department of Educational Technology, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
³Instructional Technology/Learning Technologies Design Research, George Mason University, Fairfax, USA.

The case study presented here uses an interpretivist (qualitative, humanistic) approach to illustrate and describe a range of interactions and behaviors that occur during design meetings where mentoring and design simultaneously occur within a software engineering firm, during a portion of the design phase for a software project. It attempts to examine the interaction between two design team members (one novice and one expert) and describes how these observations intersect with the theoretical and applied literature and actual design processes. Taking cues from two theoretical descriptions of the design process, the study presented here suggests that modes and models of mentorship should be added, when applicable, as a descriptive portion of the design process.

Software Design, Mentorship, Design Meeting, Collaboration

Hatley, L. , Al-Freih, M. and Bannan, B. (2018) “I’m Just Guiding You”: An Exploration of Software Design Mentorship within a Software Engineering Firm. Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 11, 299-317. doi: 10.4236/jsea.2018.116019.