The 4P Taxonomy: A Survey of Software Development Environments

The conceptual architecture of software development environments is of vital importance to developers. Environments form our perception of software development and provide us with the tools to solve problems. Understanding the underlying concepts of software development environments can clarify how they restrict or enhance productivity. Such an understanding can benefit developers when choosing between different environments. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive, feature-based taxonomy of software development environments which emphasizes 4 central dimensions: Program, Platform, People, and Process. We claim that this taxonomy can form the conceptual foundation for a better and more systematic understanding of software development environments. We conclude the paper by applying this taxonomy to four industrial strength environments to show how it can be used.