Design & quality
設計と品質DES
How teams decide what good software is: specifications, architecture, testing, process standards and who signs off on quality.
40 claimsWell attested 10Attested 22Thin 8
Related scales
These scales describe national averages that bear on this theme. They place countries relative to one another; they say nothing about any one engineer.
- Culture MapPersuadingPrinciples-first ↔ Applications-firstWhether an argument starts from theory or from examples and conclusions.
- Culture MapSchedulingLinear time ↔ Flexible timeWhether plans are fixed and sequential or adapted as things come up.
- HofstedeUncertainty avoidanceTolerant of ambiguity ↔ Avoids ambiguityHow threatened people feel by ambiguous or unknown situations. Not the same as risk avoidance.
Japan日本JP4 claims
South Korea韓国KR3 claims
A 2013 ZDNet Korea column argued that the ppalli-ppalli ("hurry, hurry") culture leads to poor knowledge sharing, architectures that do not scale and dependence on particular developers, and so ends up slowing software development.
Thin1 source2013Datedkr-design-1
A columnist who worked with Korean teams as an outside partner observed that developers make up about 80% of a team and testers are few. He adds that this is not necessarily a weakness in an agile setting.
Thin1 source2024kr-design-2
- 정철환 칼럼: 개발자와 테스터 (CIO Korea) (2024)
SPRi (2014) and a ZDNet Korea op-ed (2023) argue that multi-tier subcontracting persists in public-sector SI projects, locking smaller firms into low-value coding so that they never build planning and design skills.
Attested2 sources2023kr-design-3
China中国CN3 claims
In AI Superpowers (2018), Kai-Fu Lee argued that a "gladiator" competition that puts speed first and accepts copying produced Chinese startups' rapid iteration. Critics say the book glorifies imitation.
Attested2 sources2019cn-design-1
From around 1998–99, Huawei adopted IBM's IPD (Integrated Product Development), required teams to follow the templates exactly, and enforced a heavy stage-gate process.
Attested2 sourcescn-design-2
In November 2023, Alibaba Cloud had its second major outage in a month, and in the same month Didi apologized for a service breakdown it blamed on a failure in underlying software.
Attested2 sources2023cn-design-3
IndiaインドIN4 claims
TCS announced in 2011 that it had been assessed at CMMI Level 5 enterprise-wide for both CMMI-DEV and CMMI-SVC, and says it was the first company in the world to reach enterprise-wide Level 5 for SVC.
Well attested1 source2011Datedin-design-1
Hiring-industry articles contrast services firms ("specs are king, process-heavy, ticket-driven") with product companies ("design docs, code review, CI/CD"). Neither is backed by research.
Thin2 sourcesin-design-2
The idea that jugaad (improvised fixes under constraints) is a virtue in software development draws criticism from Indian engineers themselves, on Hacker News and elsewhere. Others defend it as frugal engineering, such as designing apps that work on 2G connections.
Thin3 sourcesin-design-3
Zerodha is India's largest stockbroker, yet its tech team of 33–35 people self-hosts the entire stack. CTO Kailash Nadh says it is a misconception that team size must grow in proportion to the number of users.
Attested2 sources2024in-design-4
United StatesアメリカUS3 claims
At Google, engineers write a relatively informal design doc before writing code. According to Malte Ubl (2020), the point is not an exhaustive specification but a record of the trade-offs and alternatives considered.
Thin1 source2020us-design-1
Ubl says a design doc should be as long as necessary and as short as possible, and distinguishes it from a heavyweight waterfall-style specification.
Thin1 source2015Datedus-design-2
Meyer places the United States on the applications-first side of the Persuading scale. A book summary describes this as starting from conclusions and examples and favoring the practical how over the theoretical why.
Thin1 sourceus-design-3
United KingdomイギリスUK3 claims
The GDS Government Design Principles (published 2012, updated 2025) include "Start with user needs," "Do less," and "Iterate. Then iterate again." Iterative development is an official principle of the public sector.
Well attested1 source2025gb-design-1
Point 8 of the GOV.UK Service Standard is "Iterate and improve frequently." It states that a service is never finished and that maintenance such as bug fixes is not enough.
Well attested1 sourcegb-design-2
According to a 2023 NAO report, there have been 11 cross-government digital strategies in the past 25 years. The Police National Computer, introduced in 1974, is still in use.
Well attested1 source2023gb-design-3
GermanyドイツDE2 claims
Meyer's Culture Map (2014) places Germany near the principles-first end of Persuading and the linear-time end of Scheduling. She describes this as a preference for reasoning from principles to conclusions and for keeping to the plan.
Attested1 source2014Datedde-design-1
In the automotive industry, Automotive SPICE, maintained by VDA QMC, is a de facto condition of doing business. According to itemis, OEMs require suppliers to reach Level 2 to 3 with bidirectional traceability between requirements, design, and tests. This is a customer requirement, not a law.
Attested2 sources2023de-design-2
FranceフランスFR3 claims
The Culture Map (2014) places France on the principles-first side of Persuading. Meyer says that Latin European and Germanic cultures prefer deductive arguments that move from principles to conclusions.
Attested1 source2014Datedfr-design-1
French engineers are trained mainly through the diplôme d'ingénieur accredited by the CTI. According to the CDEFI Panorama, more than 200 accredited schools award 44,000 to 49,000 engineering degrees a year.
Well attested2 sources2023fr-design-2
According to Numeum, IT services firms (ESN) accounted for 50% (€34.5 billion) of the €69.4 billion digital market in 2024. Many developers work on client sites under the régie model, in which the ESN is accountable for effort rather than deliverables.
Attested2 sources2024fr-design-3
The Nordics北欧NORD3 claims
Abrahamsson et al. at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland (2002, VTT Publications 478), wrote an early systematic review comparing agile methods, cited more than 200 times in Scopus. It shows that Finland had an early presence in agile research.
Attested1 source2002Datednordics-design-1
In its 2014 culture write-up, Spotify promoted small, frequent releases and being "loosely coupled, tightly aligned," and made Scrum practices optional. The company itself said this was a journey in progress, not a finished model.
Well attested1 source2014Datednordics-design-2
At Supercell (Finland), cells of roughly 5 to 15 people own a game's whole life cycle, including the decision to kill it. CEO Ilkka Paananen said at Slush 2024 that there is no management greenlight meeting.
Attested1 source2024nordics-design-3
NetherlandsオランダNL2 claims
Guido van Rossum created Python at CWI in Amsterdam. He names his frustration with ABC's lack of extensibility and the system administration needs of the Amoeba distributed OS group as motives. He started over the 1989 Christmas holidays and released 0.9.0 on 1991-02-20.
Well attested2 sources2009Datednl-design-1
According to Thomke (HBR, 2020), Booking.com runs more than 1,000 experiments at once and over 25,000 a year. Its internal rule is that anyone can test anything without management's permission.
Attested1 source2020nl-design-2
IsraelイスラエルIL3 claims
In Chutzpah (2019), Inbal Arieli argues in chapters such as "Failure Is an Option," "Certain Uncertainty" and "Resourcefulness" that growing up amid chaos (balagan) builds improvisation and resourcefulness. The argument is not based on quantitative data.
Thin1 source2019il-design-1
Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance (UAI) is high at 81. The Culture Factor describes a culture that wants rules, punctuality and precision, yet is good at improvising under pressure.
Attested1 source2026il-design-2
According to Haaretz (2012), rosh gadol ("big head") started out as an Israeli army term. It is praise for someone who sees the wider picture, takes responsibility and acts on their own initiative beyond their role.
Attested1 source2012Datedil-design-3
BrazilブラジルBR2 claims
Lua was created in 1993 at Tecgraf, PUC-Rio, out of work for Petrobras. Its designers cite the 1977-92 "market reserve" policy, which made imported software expensive and hard to obtain, as part of the reason they built their own language.
Well attested1 source2007Datedbr-design-1
A study using data from around 2013 found that agile adoption in Brazil was mostly bottom-up, led by developers and team leads. This differs from the global pattern, where top-down adoption was more common.
Attested1 source2013Datedbr-design-2
PolandポーランドPL3 claims
The University of Warsaw won the ICPC World Finals in 2003 and 2007, placed second in 2012 and 2017, and fourth in 2019. Jagiellonian University (Kraków) placed second in 2006.
Well attested2 sources2026pl-design-1
In country scores HackerRank published in 2016, Poland scored about 98 and ranked third, behind China (100) and Russia (99.9). The United States ranked 28th (78).
Attested1 source2016pl-design-2
Poland's Hofstede uncertainty avoidance (UAI) score is very high at 93. The training company Talaera notes that reviews and approvals are expected to come with supporting documents, and proposals without them have a harder time.
Attested2 sources2026pl-design-3
UkraineウクライナUA2 claims
At the ICPC World Finals, Lviv National University placed fourth in 2008 and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv placed fourth in 2010, both winning gold medals.
Attested1 source2026ua-design-1
Ukraine's Hofstede uncertainty avoidance (UAI) score is extremely high at 95. The outsourcing firm N-iX (2019) links this to a preference for detailed plans and background explanations. The article is written from the seller's side.
Attested2 sources2026ua-design-2