Theoretical Analysis And Case Study On Development Capabilities Of China's Software Organizations

Software Industry has become the basis of information society and the focus of global competition. A country's competitive advantage of software industry is built on the capabilities development of its software firms. For the software companies as a whole, whether product companies or service companies, software development capability (SDC) is one of the most essential and important capabilities. But the current research touched little upon the issue of SDC in software organizations. Here, SDC means a firm's ability to provide high quality software product or service at low cost and according to schedule. In this study, we try to answer two questions: what is the SDC, and how does it grow?The paper is based on the knowledge-based theory of the firm, with knowledge management and organizational learning as the main analyzing tools. We integrate therorcal analysis and case study method in this study. Firstly, based on the various literatures of software indusry study and interviews with several software practicers, questionnaires and protocols were designed for further spot inteviews. Then with the questionnaires and protocols, 23 firms located in Beijing, Ji'nan and Xi'an were selected as our samples. Through the interviews, we can build up the common sense of software development process and SDC in China's software organizations (CSO). On the base of the case interviews, knowledge- based models of software development process and software developing organization were constructed. Then with the models, SDC was analyzed from the point of view of organizational learning. At last, we select 3 companies to carry out case studies.Based on above analysis, we draw the conclusion that: (1) For CSO, SDC is the capability to integrate and use the knowledge effectively both in and out of the organization in nature and domain knowledge is more important than technology knowledge. (2) SDC development is based on the closed-loop organizational learning. In order to develop it SDC, CSO has to build effective mechanism to transfer and share knowledge in the process of knowledge acquirement, sharing and storage. (3)Tacit knowledge based accumulation and sharing model, and knowledgecodification based knowledge creation and sharing model are two kinds of SDC developing models. (4)The software R&D branch in hardware firms' SDC development is based on knowledge codification, which has competition advantage in customarized software development. (5)The independent software venders and small-scale information system integrators' SDC developing is based on tacit knowledge. Their SDC development can be divided into two phases: to develop one product or application domain specific SDC at first, and then to generalize it to other products and application domains.At the end of this paper, some advices are given to software organizations and government.