Same difficulties that the ones abroad! Difficulties of change management that needs to be done : the job description / roles / responsibilities / authorities of the people directly involved in development WILL change. relationship between business (deciding of the software product features) and development teams WILL also change. For the best for sure, but any change can involve resistance.
1- Agile methods are more and more used but it is still a minority and critical mass not reached yet. Usage of traditional Engineering is dominant and the perceived value is that it is the right thing to do. So there is an incentive to stay aligned with this. 2- High employee turnover and difficulty to find and keep suitable talents (that would, understand, accept and thrive using Agile methods). Why? High competition, high personal pressure (salary sensitiveness), majority of developers is relatively young and less experienced. Result? This makes Agile adoption more difficult (less focus on individuals and interactions) since it is safe to have a “pluggable programming unit” as mentioned by Martin Fowler. Proof: The huge efforts that have to be deployed by the Agile companies in China to find the suitable talents. Does the important respect for hierarchy makes it more difficult to switch roles to “coaches” instead of managers with direct authority?
1- because of the market size and attractiveness, competitive labor. Therefore the need of adapting to change. 2- Chinese business culture and definition of business partnership is very Agile: - “Responding to change rather then following the plan”. There is a famous saying in Chinese “ 计划没有变化得快 ” , which means that changing is faster then using a plan. “ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”. Very true in China. Therefore being able to deliver software that follows the accepted preferences of business is clearly an advantage.
1- Chinese culture: Importance of the harmony in a group (software development team) and culture of cohesion. Therefore self-organizing teams should be a fairly natural thing. ELIMINATED 2- Software industry is relatively new, a lot of relatively not small sized companies did not YET put in place comprehensive heavy-weight processes, a high use of “code and fix” approach in a lot of small companies, which is normal. 3- There is a big push in the legislation and application of Intellectual Property to let the Chinese software development industry develop and become more competitive. This will help adding more perceived value for software and will boost the local software industry: competition will be even fiercest and innovation, quality and delivery methods will become ever more important.