Development of expertise in complex domains

It is necessary to understand how human planners´ performance evolves over time with increasing expertise in order to develop effective computer critics, tutors, knowledge acquisition systems, and training strategies. In this paper we present two studies of the development of expertise in complex domains: manufacturing planning and software development management planning. We had experts in each domain rank order the plans created by practitioners at various levels of experience from best to worst quality. We did this to assess whether practitioners really did gain skill with increased experience in both of these fields or whether experts were “self proclaimed”. Next, we analyzed the spoken statements of the practitioners to identify the knowledge and problem solving strategies they used or lacked. We used these data to model the skill development phases in each domain. These models can be used to develop computer tools and training strategies to help practitioners achieve higher levels of competence