Creating Software Product Value in China

Abstract

China has become a formidable player and continues to grow strongly in what has become a dynamic global market for software development. In this highly competitive environment it has never been more difficult or important to maximize the creation of software product value. But each key stakeholder group -purchasers, users, software managers and developers -has a different notion of value when looking at a software product. As the value of a software product is largely derived through the requirements it fulfils, we looked at the criteria used to select and prioritise requirements for a release of software, and the perspectives that motivate them. The value of a software product is largely derived through the requirements it fulfils. To help understand how value is created we looked at the criteria used to select and prioritise requirements for a release of software, and the perspectives that motivate them. We studied three groups of software development companies operating in China -Chinese companies with a domestic market, Chinese companies with an international market, and western companies operating in China. The results were similar for all three groups, except After-sales Support was a significantly greater concern for Chinese companies with an international market.

Key Stakeholders’ Value Propositions for Feature Selection in Software-Intensive Products: An Industrial Case Study

“…Besides the secondary studies presented in Section 1 ([4], [9], [41]), there have been some empirical studies investigating stakeholders value propositions in relation to product management (studies close to the scope of this research) (e.g. [10], [12], [13], [42]- [46]). However, these studies, which are further discussed in Section 5, differ from our approach in three distinct ways:…”

“…A first series of six survey studies was published between 2005 and 2009 [13], [43], [12], [44], [45], [42]. In 2015, Latha and Suganthi [46] replicated the survey with companies in India.…”

“…This dimension was not mentioned in [10], perhaps, because of the characteristics of the stakeholders included in that study (product owners and process responsible). Regarding the survey studies, besides, Business strategy [44] [42], and Product's strategy, which is partially considered in the criteria Functions is promised/sold in [12], [45] [46], aspects related to strategic issues were not stressed.  On value propositions and agile software development: A recent systematic literature review on agile requirements [67] found that the greatest challenge in managing requirements/features in Agile is that only focusing on business value may become problematic, as there might be other factors to consider.…”

Software Requirements Triage and Selection: State-of-the-Art and State-of-Practice

“…However, it has been reported as a challenge to achieve this balance during requirements triage and selection. Several studies recommend a set of criteria to be used during requirements triage and selection which can help mitigate this challenge [11,[25][26][27]. Thus, we asked survey respondents as to which of the stated criteria they consider today and which should ideally be considered during requirements triage to address this challenge (details in Section VI).…”

When Product Managers Gamble with Requirements: Attitudes to Value and Risk

“…Recent studies on MDSPD show that commercial requirements are perceived more important than system requirements [4,5,6,7]. However, these studies also show that system requirements are generally undervalued.…”