1. Culture
In Global Software Development
Web lecture
University of Amsterdam
Within the scope of the subject Software Process
by: A. Dube, P. Darkow, S. Rohde
2. Introduction
What is Culture ?
Global Software Development (GSD)
Cultural Diversity
Examples in real Industry
Disadvantages
Lessons learned
Questions
References
Web lecture - Index
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3. Research has been carried out in the field of software
development and observations indicate that cultural
diversity in development teams may promote or may
hinder productivity.
We want to look at the various types of diversity and
their effect on the productivity of these teams with
the use of real examples from industry and personal
experiences.
Introduction
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4. Definitions: Culture is,
“Civilization", including education, manners, arts
and crafts and their products.
How people think, feel, and act from different
countries and nations.
What is Culture ?
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5. Different Levels of Culture within a Culture:
National Level
National differences through raise and values from
childhood.
Organizational Level
People spent a lot of time in organizations
Organizational differences in practices.
Occupational Level
Differences through occupation.
Gender Level
Grade of traditional gender roles.
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What is Culture ?
6. To understand Culture and it’s differences, different
models were created.
G. Hofstede - Five Cultural Dimensions (Most used)
E. T. Hall’s - Cultural Factors - (Low and High Context)
Alfons Trompenaars & Charles Hampden –Turner
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What is Culture ?
7. Hofstede provides five simple dimensions to compare
different cultures.
Hofstede identifies five national culture dimensions:
power distance (PDI)
individualism/collectivism (IDV)
masculinity/femininity (MAS)
uncertainty avoidance (UAI)
long term orientation (LTO)
What is Culture ?
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8. Direct versus indirect communication (Low / High Context)
In Western cultures is typically direct and explicit
Not many other cultures, where meaning is embedded in the
way the message is presented.
Trouble with accents and fluency (language)
International business language is English
Misunderstandings, deep frustration by non-native speakers
accents, lack of fluency, problems with translation or usage
Cultural Barriers to success
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9. Differing attitudes towards hierarchy and authority
multicultural teamwork is by design, with teams that have a
flat structure.
team members from some cultures are uncomfortable on flat
teams. (PDI)
Conflicting norms for decision making (UAI)
Cultures differ enormously when it comes to decision
making–particularly, how quickly decisions should be made
and how much analysis is required beforehand
Cultural Barriers to success
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10. Global Software Development increased the last
decades. More and more reasons for that are:
Reduced development costs
National market turn into international markets
Bigger Pool of Knowledge and Talent recourses
Development/testing and Support (24/7)
Global Software Development
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11. Top Outsource Countries
Since the 1990’s is a significant rise in GSD within
Ireland, India and Israel.
Israel ‘s and Ireland’s popularity as locations for low cost
offshoring and outsourcing software development
decreases.
From these initial three I’s, India is the number One
location for outsourcing and offshoring software
development.
Changing Outsource Strategy
More GSD outsourcing in the neighbor countries:
GSD Outsource Countries
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13. This presents challenges in the management of GSD:
Team members are from a number of nations with
varied social, economic and cultural background
Diverse locations both onsite and offsite, spread
geographically over time zones.
Managers need a sensitive understanding about
cultures and cultural diversity.
Problems in the Domain of GSD
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14. Adaptation
Acknowledging cultural gaps openly and
working around them.
Structural intervention
Changing the shape of the team.
Managerial intervention
Setting norms early or bringing in a higher-level
manager.
Exit
Removing a team member when other options have
failed.
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Strategies to Solve problems in GSD
16. Cultural differences can create substantial obstacles
to effective teamwork
but these may be subtle and difficult to recognize
until significant damage has already been done.
Cultural Diversity
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18. Research question: “How is cultural diversity managed
within Indian Software Companies?”
The results show that the project managers in Indian
software companies have to manage both National
and International or Western culture.
Experiment Cultural Diversity
India
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19. National Culture
Question: ‘Which are the formal and informal languages for
communication amongst teams and team members.’
Result English and Language has never been a barrier for
communication within the teams.
Religion and Festival
every state in India has its own religious and festive calendar
Gender
preference for married female team members because they
are considered to be stable and less chances of relocating
Result India Research
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20. International Culture
Onsite Coordinator plan, coordinate and manage the
work between teams.
Onsite Visits are planned for team members to meet
their counterparts with whom they interact regularly.
Training Major initiatives are taken to ensure that team
members understand culture and related issues.
Result India Research
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21. National Culture
Collective mental programming of the people of any particular
nationality or as inherited ethical habit.
Organizational or Corporate Culture
Covers many facets of organizational life. This type of culture is
strong for people but weaker for individuals.
Professional Culture
Is ingrained through highly structured formal education during
formative years and continued through training programs.
Types of Diversity
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22. Functional Culture
made up of those norms and habits associated with functional
roles within the organization.
Team Culture
That emerges from bonding through common work
experiences.
Types of Diversity
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23. Good situations
higher power distance cultures derive greater
productivity from anonymity and perceive anonymity as
advantageous.
Previous qualitative research suggests that multi-site
development may increase development cycle time.
Examples in real industry
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24. Indian manager of IT project found himself frustrated when he
met with two Japanese members to try to get the Japan section
to deliver its part of the project.
The Japanese members seemed to be saying yes, but in the
Indian manager’s view, their follow-through was insufficient.
He put together an e-Business road show, took it to
Japan, invited the whole IT team to view it at a lunch
meeting, and walked through success stories.
It was rather subtle, he said, but it worked. In the end, the whole
team worked well together – and no higher level manager got
involved.
Good Examples
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25. Bad situations
technology acceptance may also be an issue
there may be communication barriers due to language
differences
compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much
longer, and requires more people for work of equal size
and complexity
engineers and managers must add the challenges of
coordinating work across sites, spanning
national, language, and cultural barriers
Examples in real industry
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26. Communication breakdown
Attitude, social organization, thought
persons, roles, spoken and written language, non-
verbal communication and time
Collectivist cultures have a low tolerance of open
dispute within a team or between teams
Culture affects tolerances of conflict and therefore
the willingness to confront or withdraw
Disadvantages
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28. To manage cultural diversity:
The management need to study the other culture and
learn about their habits and interests.
The management need to open and should be willing to
adapt new cultures.
The whole team needs to be open and sensitive
Lessons Learned
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29. Check YouTube there are a tons of videos about
global software development and culture.
Visit Unicef site and sites of similar organizations
Use our Web Lecture
Want More?
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31. [1] - Cultural differences: explaining the differences in results in GSS: Implications for
the next generation by, Lai Lai Tung, M.A. Quaddus
[2] - Culture in Global Software Development a Weakness or Strength by Sadhana
Deshpande, Ita Richardson, Valentine Casey, and Sarah Beecham
[3] - The Effect of Cultural Differences on Software Development by D Patel, C Lawson-
Johnson & S Patel
[4] - Managing MulticulturalTeams
[5] - Culture and Its Impact on Team Effectiveness by Ira Asherman and Catherine
Mercer Bing
[6] - Global Software Development in Practise Lesson Learned by Rafeal Prikladnicki,
Jorge Luis Nicolas Audy, and Roberto Evaristo
References
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32. [7] - Global Software Development by James D. Herbsleb and Deependra
Moitra
[8] - An Empirical Study of Global Software Development: Distance and Speed
[9] - Effect of team diversity on software project performance
[10]- Investigating cultural differences in virtual software teams
[11] - Top Outsourcing countries:
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/global_outsourcing.html
[12] - Map editor:
http://edit.freemap.jp/en/trial_version/edit/world
[13] - Hofstede’s country selector and Homepage:
http://geert-hofstede.com
[14] - Hall culture:
http://changingminds.org/explanations/culture/hall_culture.htm
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References
Editor's Notes
This presentation/web lecture shows:Problems and strategies to solve the problems with cultural diversity in GSDFocus on Cultural diversity and examples from the real industry.
Different Leveles within a Culture:Also every culture has its own cultural diversities: as you can see in the list above.Of coursepeoplefromone country have more closer cultural bindingsthatwithpeoplefromother National cultures.Also per Organisaition you have a different cultural level, a mix of individual culture and the companies culture.Occupational Culture. Like look at us, all of us are software engineers, more or less. We live also in our own culture, maybe in a way more different culture than business and accounting people.Of course, Gender level. Here we dont have it so much, also in Germany its nearly equal (we have Merkel), but in other countries this is a way more bigger deal.In some cultures males are more dominant both at the woprk place as well as in the household.
Example:Differing attitudes towards hierarchy and authorityOne manager of Mexican heritage, who was working on a credit and underwriting team for a bank, told us,“In Mexican culture, you’re always supposed to be humble. So whether you understand something or not, you’re supposed to put it in the form of a question. You have to keep it open-ended, out of respect. I think that actually worked against me, because the Americans thought I really didn’t know what I was talking about. So it made me feel like they thought I was wavering on my answer.”Example: Conflicting norms for decision making (UAI)A Brazilian manager at an American company who was negotiating to buy Korean products destined for Latin America told us, “On the first day, we agreed on three points, and on the second day, the U.S.-Spanish side wanted to start with point four. But the Korean side wanted to go back and re-discuss points one through three. My boss almost had an attack.”Reference:Paper Managing Multicultural Teams
-Outsourcingdevelopment to othercountriesmayresult in the companygainingthroughpaying low salaries especially in countrieslike India and otherdevelopingcountrieswhere living standards and minimum salaries and taxes are low.-this also gives the outsourcingcompanyaccess to international markets.-knowledge pool is widenedwhencompaniesinvest in foreigncountries as theyget the oppotunity to employ more ambitious and talentedpeople.-the differences in time zones meansthatdevelopmentcanbedone 24/7.
- Adaptation - Acknowledging cultural gaps openly and working around them.- Structural intervention -Changing the shape of the team.- Managerial intervention - Setting norms early or bringing in a higher-level manager.- Exit - Removing a team member when other options have failed.Reference: Paper Managing Multicultural Teams
-functionaldiversityfocuseson the rolesassigned to a team member. A manager is expected to do certainroles in computer sciencethatmightbe different in socialsciences.-team culture encouragespeople to worktogether as a team and solveorfindworkaround to their individual differences.
-observations indicated that in North American businesses, individuals usually make decisions while in Japan, groups make decisions[1].-Mexican groups had higher levels of consensus than USA groups.-USA groups had more comments and unique ideas as compared to Singaporean and Mexican groups-Singaporean groups had higher pre-meeting consensus than USA and they had less changes in consensus and had more equality of influence in decision making
-in this case thisresulted in a fasterrealisation of the intendedresult.-the teams also managed to have a solutionfortheirmisunderstandings without involvinghigher management.
-in some cultures e.g. bussiness cultures canchoose to use .g. Windows XP while a member in anotherlocationprefers to workwith Linux. Thiscanbe a big problemif none of them is ready to give in and start to use the othertechnology.
-misunderstandings are rampant in multiculturalbussinessgroups.
space: different cultures have different attitudes towards space material goods: used for power and statusfriendship: interpersonal relationships vary considerably across culturestime: linear time cultures take time and deadlines very seriously in a very rationalist sense. Time is structured, sequential and linearAgreement: expressing agreement and disagreement varies by culture in the level of formality
Do you have any Questions?Feel free to ask, now is the time.
List of references: If you want to learn more about the studies, please have a look into these papers.
List of references: If you want to learn more about the studies, please have a look into these links.
