Analysis of Environmental Factors for Mobile Software Development Focused on Korean Companies

Software should be a product that can be used easily and accurately by the user and should be improved quickly and accurately when problems arise. In many software development projects, software requirements are frequently modified during the design or development phase, which tests the development of specific designers' or developers' capabilities. Software development environmental factors (SDEFs), such as differences in mutual work recognition among users, developers, and testers or knowledge differences, can hinder communication, which may lead to faulty development owing to erroneous job definition. Because the exact size and scope of the software cannot be calculated, the risk of excessive requirements, such as schedule, cost, and manpower, may increase. This study aims to investigate 32 SDEFs to examine the influence of factors affecting the reliability of software developed by Korean companies to identify factors with high influence and compare differences with previous studies. Moreover, we found whether any new SDEFs from the top 10 rankings only affected Korean companies, and also US companies included in previous studies. A factor analysis revealed several potential factors to identify the mutually independent characteristics of the factors. Through statistical analysis methods, the difference between the group means and the impact on improving the software reliability were found in Korean companies. These findings can provide useful benefits to software developers and managers working in countries with different or similar cultures and help increase working efficiency, i.e., work versus time investment and software reliability improvement.