MyTechDailyNews Explainer: Five Shifts in China's Software Industry That Change How Projects Get Delivered
Walk into any software project built today and the room looks different from the one that existed a decade ago — smaller, faster and far more tool-driven. In China, the software and information technology services industry has changed enormously over that period. The rapid growth of cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, mobile internet, artificial intelligence and VR is a clear signal that the sector is moving toward maturity.
One Shanghai-based company sits squarely in the middle of that transition. Longfu Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. specializes in software technology development, mainly for large enterprises, providing omnichannel digital marketing solutions, digital marketing services, enterprise application consulting and development, and enterprise system operations and maintenance. Supported by its solutions and a broad book of industry case studies, the company has delivered information-system implementation and development services to several Fortune Global 500 clients.
Shen Xiaoliang, deputy general manager and chief technology officer at Longfu Information, has more than a decade of experience in software and solution development and architecture, and has watched the industry's development and transformation first-hand. As the person leading the company's project implementations, he shared what he calls the "hardcore" essentials of running a software project — and MyTechDailyNews has turned them into a plain-language briefing for anyone who buys, builds or simply uses software at work.
Shift 1: Agile pushed the waterfall aside — and DevOps became the glue
The center of gravity of software work has gradually moved to the cloud in recent years, and with it the attention of teams has landed on DevOps. The word is a combination of Development and Operations, and it serves as a general term for the processes, methods and systems used to promote communication, collaboration and integration among development (application and software engineering), technical operations and quality assurance (QA).
The waterfall model has been progressively replaced by agile development models. In everyday terms, that means development speed has to be quicker and an idea needs to be converted into code immediately, so that time is not wasted sitting in the gaps between stages. Because teams must communicate with each other far more tightly, the industry has learned to "embrace" DevOps — it makes software development faster, more frequent and more reliable.
Shift 2: Half of today's productivity now lives in the toolchain
The evolution of the industry has produced a continuous stream of collaboration and development tools. Version-control tools such as Git, GitLab and GitHub have greatly improved the efficiency of team collaboration. The rapid development of PaaS platforms has also provided enterprises with more efficient deployment and operations capability. Platforms including Kubernetes (K8s) and PCF are drawing growing attention.
Reading the trend forward, the argument is that developers should put more energy into code construction and the implementation of business logic, and raise their capacity for core value creation, while letting the platform carry the repetitive work.
Shift 3: The "next language will replace this one" idea stopped holding
In the past, many programmers believed that one development language would be substituted by another. As the internet developed and new languages kept emerging, people gradually found that the original idea was not entirely correct. Constantly changing new languages do not necessarily bring new productive capacity; different development languages and different technologies each play their own different role in their own fields. The world is diverse, and the technology world is the same — different languages are shining in different domains.
Shift 4: China's developer community moved from follower to frontrunner
China's software development atmosphere has been turning in a better direction: from a blind follower into a leader on the world stage. It can be said to have already reached a fairly top level, because software developers have become people with their own ideas.
Look back ten years ago: when people browsed the various development forums and websites, the hot topics most developers chased were foreign servers, frameworks, languages and foreign design thinking.
In recent years, however, the rapid development of the internet in China and the rise of distinctive local industries have produced problems with almost no precedent — in e-commerce, high concurrency and big data, for example — which had to be created and solved with local capability. That is why this generation of engineers has become more and more confident.
Shift 5: Teams shrank, and job descriptions widened
Ten years ago, developing a single system might have required assembling a team of 30 people or even 40 people; today it often takes only 10 people, sometimes fewer than 10. The continuous evolution of development tools, the maturity of development methodology and the application of all kinds of collaboration tools mean a project of the same size, in today's world a decade later, is delivered by a much more compact team.
The gap between roles inside the team has also narrowed. Where everyone once stuck to a strictly divided job, team members now each take on some additional responsibilities across boundaries. This change places higher demands on today's engineers, and is a genuine challenge.
Then and now, side by side
| Dimension | Ten years ago | A decade later, today |
|---|---|---|
| Team size for one system | 30 people or even 40 people | Often 10 people, sometimes fewer than 10 |
| Dominant delivery model | Waterfall | Agile development, with DevOps embraced across dev, ops and QA |
| Toolchain | Fragmented, manual handoffs | Git, GitLab, GitHub; PaaS growth; Kubernetes (K8s), PCF |
| Where ideas came from | Foreign servers, frameworks, languages and design thinking on overseas forums | Home-grown answers to unprecedented local problems in e-commerce, high concurrency, big data |
| Role structure | Strictly divided, one job per person | Roles overlapping, each member doubles up |
| Language view | One language will replace another | Pluralistic: different languages shine in different fields |
Common misconceptions worth leaving behind
- A new language automatically means new productivity. Newer languages are not guaranteed to deliver it; fit to the domain matters more than novelty.
- Agile means "no process". The shift away from waterfall is about tighter communication and quicker conversion of ideas into code, supported by DevOps — not about removing discipline.
- Smaller teams mean the work got easier. The same-size project is now delivered by a more compact team because tooling and methodology matured; that raises, rather than lowers, the bar per person.
- Talent can simply be purchased. As the summary puts it, transfusing blood is not as good as teaching the body to make its own: growing people internally is an investment, not an expense.
A practical checklist for your next implementation
- Agree the delivery model before the first line of code, and include QA and operations in the loop from day one.
- Map the toolchain explicitly: version control (Git, GitLab or GitHub), deployment and runtime (a PaaS path, Kubernetes/K8s, PCF or an equivalent).
- Choose programming languages by domain fit, not by fashion.
- Size the team honestly against today's norm — compact, cross-covering roles rather than silos of 30 people or 40 people.
- Budget for internal training as an investment, and expect better team cohesion and employee loyalty as a return.
- Document a development standard and a way of working with your own company's characteristics, instead of importing somebody else's wholesale.
FAQ
What exactly is DevOps, in one sentence?
It is the umbrella term for the processes, methods and systems that make development, technical operations and quality assurance communicate, collaborate and integrate instead of throwing work over a wall to each other.
Why do project teams look so much smaller than ten years ago?
Because tools and method grew up. Version control, PaaS and container platforms such as Kubernetes (K8s) and PCF absorb work that used to require more people, so a system that once needed 30 people or 40 people now needs 10 people or fewer than 10.
Does the Fortune Global 500 implementation experience described here matter to ordinary readers?
Indirectly, a great deal: the omnichannel digital marketing systems, enterprise applications and ongoing maintenance delivered for Fortune Global 500 clients are the same kind of platforms that end users touch every day, and their speed and reliability now depend on agile and DevOps practice.
Is any single programming language the safe long-term bet?
No — and that assumption has already been abandoned. New languages do not necessarily create new productivity; different languages and technologies play different roles in different fields.
What does all of this mean for an individual engineer?
Higher demands. With roles overlapping and teams compact, fundamentals — English reading ability, computer basics, algorithm basics — become the differentiator, and the habit of thinking for yourself becomes part of the job.
Action advice
- For enterprises: treat the cultivation of in-house talent as an investment, and build a development standard and a working style with your own characteristics rather than copying another shop's.
- For practitioners: keep your feet on the ground and maintain a good habit of thinking. Basic skills are extremely important and must never be ignored — English reading ability, computer fundamentals, algorithm fundamentals. You cannot forge hot iron with a soft hammer, so everyone needs their own basics to be solid.
- For teams under funding pressure: a research-and-development orientation aimed at the capital market easily triggers restlessness across the industry; at any time, everyone in the sector needs to stay grounded and keep thinking independently.
The takeaway for anyone outside the industry
China's software market is still in a phase of sustained high-speed development and is gradually maturing, and for both enterprises and practitioners that is an opportunity and a challenge at the same time. The practical reading for a general audience is simpler: the systems you use at work are now built in shorter loops, by smaller teams, on top of platforms rather than on top of heroics — which is why release cycles feel faster, why your IT department has fewer people, and why the companies that survive are the ones that trained their own engineers instead of buying finished ones.
Reporting and editing by Sarah Chen for MyTechDailyNews (Tech Daily). For questions or corrections, reach the news desk at hello@techdaily.com.