A Study on Relationships Among Software Engineering Capabilities in Japan Using Panel Analysis

To understand how software engineering capabilities relate to IT vendors’ business performance and business environment, the author designed social research on software engineering excellence (SEE) and administered it in 2005, 2006 and 2007 with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The author measured the SEE survey results with regard to seven factors including service science characteristics: deliverables, project management, quality assurance, process improvement, research and development, human development, and contact with customers. This paper integrates 233 responses to the SEE surveys into a new database and identified 151 unique IT firms. Based on the results of the panel analysis, most SEE factors for a year had significant positive influences on the same factors the next year. Three paths existed to improving the level of deliverables through project management, quality assurance and research and development. Some SEE factors had significant positive influence on different factors in the following year diagonally. Some negative paths existed, implying that effort put toward a particular factor did not pay off during the research. These efforts may have longer-term effects on other SEE factors. In comparison to the overall structure, stratified analysis on the relationships among the seven factors suggested that year-to-year relationships of the independent vendors tend to be strengthened due to enhancement of series correlation.