Analysis of the peculiarity of the japanese software development style in offshore software development

Offshore software development (OSD) is now becoming a global trend. While western companies are using OSD effectively, Japanese companies have not yet used it effectively. Several studies have concluded that this is due to the peculiarity of the Japanese software development style in OSD and have pointed out the problems of Japanese OSD. However, the peculiarity of the Japanese software development style has not been identified yet. Therefore, this paper attempts to identify it. Most previous studies have described the problems of Japanese OSD without considering the software development method. We have focused on agile methods and attempted to analyze the problems pointed out previous studies in accordance with the features of agile methods. It was found that the Japanese software development style is agile-like. In addition, a survey was conducted to find out what kind of software development method is being used in Japanese OSD projects. It was found that the waterfall method is mainly used. It is concluded that the peculiarity of the Japanese software development style and problems come from the conflict between the software development methods used and their actual implementations. IEEJ Trans 2010 DOI: 10.1002/tee.20605