Software Development Differences of the 1980s: U.S. and Japan

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

In the late 1980s, there was a large debate among practitioners and the popular press about whether the software quality and performance of Japanese software developers was in comparison to their U.S. counterparts. The Japanese developers appeared to be progressing in similar fashions as they had in other industries and would thus shortly surpass the U.S. in the software development area also. However, popular press and some case studies were used to support each side and there seemed to be no way to end this debate.

This paper provides a thorough literature review of the research to date, and gathers quantitative data from 40 projects to support the conclusion that the Japanese software projects have reached the U.S. level of quality, productivity and reuse of software code. This paper concludes that there is are a few significant differences between the U.S. and Japanese software development industries. The Japanese spent less time on coding, and more time on design, additionally, Japanese products, of larger sizes, had fewer defects.

[edit] Abstract

Since the early 1980s, there has been a mounting debate in industry literature and in U.S. government-sponsored reports over the relative performance of software developers in Japan versus those in the United States. This literature is somewhat divided between assertions of Japanese or U.S. superiority in this technology, although many observers in the popular business press continue to insist that the U.S. maintains an overwhelming lead in this technology. However, both sides of the debate have offered evidence that, to date, has been primarily qualitative or based on one or two cases. This paper contributes to the debate in two ways. First, it offers a comprehensive literature review that analyzes existing comparisons of Japanese and U.S. practice in software development and summarizes the major proposed differences in performance. Second, it presents the first set of quantitative data collected from a statistically comparable sample of 24 U.S. and 16 Japanese software-development projects, and uses these data to test propositions from the literature. The analyses indicate that Japanese software projects perform at least as well as their U.S. counterparts in basic measures of productivity, quality (defects), and reuse of software code. The data also make it possible to offer models that explain some of the differences in productivity and quality among projects in both countries.

[edit] Paper Information

Authors: Michael Cusumano, Chris Kemerer

Check out this paper at A Quantitative Analysis of U.S. and Japanese Practice and Performance in Software Development

This paper was originally published in Management Science, Vol 36, Num 11, 1990.

[edit] Keywords

Software development productivity, software quality, software reuse, japanese software, japanese management methods