Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.3.3.6 Business Practices in the Japanese IT Industry
The Person-Month Myth
Regarding the business practices of the Japanese IT industry, several obstacles exist
to the development of IT professionalism. The “person-month” is still used as the
usual measure of development cost for information systems. This was originally
used in the manufacturing industry and is not necessarily a good fit for estimating
the product cost of human intellectual activities such as software. As described by
Brooks (
1995
), the concept of the person-month assumes that an IT professional is
productive all the time. It also presumes that one IT professional can be substituted
with another, ignoring any difference in skills and knowledge between them. These
assumptions are based on the misunderstanding of intellectual work and workers.
This unrealistic method of cost estimation often results in unreasonable infor-
mation system implementation deadlines, and turns gold-collar workers into blue-
collar or entry-level workers. Because punctuality is the soul of the Japanese
business culture, the frontline members of system development teams are often
forced to work without relief to meet deadlines while sacrificing their job quality.
This requires physical capacity and mental toughness, not creativity or original
thought.
In addition, the terms and conditions of a written contract for the development
and implementation of information systems in Japan are sometimes considered to
be
Tatemae
, a simple formality with no real substance. In general, a written contract
is prone to be considered far less important than the mutual faith and trust of all
parties to the contract (Nakane
1972
), and a conflict between them, if it occurs,
tends to be resolved without resorting to the provisions of the contract (Uchida
2000
). The Japanese business culture of “the customers are our gods” or “the
customers are always right” encourages this tendency, and scope creep without
adjustment of deadlines is not unusual.
Under these circumstances, a more competent IT professional in a system
development team must work harder and longer to meet an immovable deadline,
which eventually tends to reduce the quality of the work performed. Hence, even
though the quality of work should be dependent on the worker's personal skills,
taking full responsibility for personal performance becomes very difficult.
False Contracting and Multi-tier Subcontracts
Recently, false contracting has become a serious social issue in Japan in which
contract-based workers are forced to work for their client companies as if they were
normal employees. This is common in the Japanese IT industry to reduce personnel
costs, even though it is illegal. Moreover, many Japanese IT professionals do not
understand that false contracting is illegal.
