System and Software Processes in Practice: Insights from Chinese Industry

Software development processes play a key role in the software and system development life cycle. Processes are becoming complex and evolve rapidly due to the modern-day continuous software engineering (CSE) concepts, which are mainly based on continuous integration, continuous delivery, infrastructure-as-code, automation and more. The fast growing Chinese software development industry adopts various processes to achieve potential benefits offered in the international market. This study is conducted with the aim to investigate the trends of processes in practice in the Chinese industry. The survey questionnaire data is collected from 34 practitioners working in software development firms across the China and the results highlight that iterative and agile processes are extensively used in industrial setting. Furthermore, agile and traditional approaches are combined to develop the hybrid processes. Most of the participants are satisfied using the current development processes, however, they show interest to continuously improve the existing process models and methods. Finally, we noticed that majority of the software development organizations used the ISO 9001 standard for process assessment and improvement activities. The given results provide preliminary overview of processes deployed in the Chinese industry.