The influence of cultural and social aspects on the Japanese software development environment

This paper presents a study on the type of software development environment currently dominating the Japanese software industry, in particular examining how this environment is influenced by cultural and social aspects of Japanese society. Some of the early problems facing software development in Japan are reviewed, followed by a description of the successful “software factory” approach to these problems, which is an attempt to treat intangible software products as tangible industrial products utilizing quality control and personnel management procedures adopted from Japan's successful hardware industry. Finally, a look is taken at a proposed ideal software development environment influenced by both Japanese/Oriental philosophy and holistic thinking, which aims at providing harmony between the creative efforts of individual software engineers and overall project objectives.