An investigation of software development productivity in China

Software productivity conveys fundamental information for many decision making processes, such as in-house development benchmarking and outsourcing strategic planning. However, there is a lack of statistical results on this matter with respect to Chinese software industry. In this paper, through the analysis of 999 industry projects in China, we seek to develop in-depth and comprehensive understanding about software productivity status in China, by identifying significant influential factors and examining their true effects based on our dataset. As a result, Organization is identified as the most significant factor, followed by Development type, Business area, Region, Language, Project size and Team size. Further assessment and findings are also presented with relevant recommendations to increase productivity and improve software processes.