January 17 th , 2005

1. The Software Engineering Impacts of Cultural Factors on Multi-cultural Software Development Teams.ByGreg Borchers25th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2003 p540-548Poster by:Olman Hernández January 17th, 2005

2. Executive Summary • Paper describes the observations of how some cultural factors impacted the software engineering practices implemented on a global development project. • Cultural factors utilized in the paper are defined by Geert Hofstede in his book “Culture’s Consequences”. • Power Distance Index • Uncertainty Avoidance Index • Individualism Index • Author recognizes that rigorous software processes CANNOT overcome the power of the cultural layer. • The overall recommendations are : • To be culturally aware • Adapt and adjust the expectations to the realities of cultural impacts

3. Introduction • Study is based on 2 separate development projects over a 4 year span • Project team was globally dispersed • Japan – Parent Company • US – Research Lab leading the projects • India – Development groups both internally and external vendor • Author served as technical lead and PM roles in different phases on both projects • Based on the work of Geert Hofstede • Industrial Psychologist at IBM • Study based on data from over 100,000 surveys in 40 countries • Looks at attitude of people towards their jobs along numerous dimensions of culture • Dimensions expressed in terms of indexes

4. Power Distance (PDI) • India 77 Japan 54 U.S.A 40 • Identifies the way in which people think about equality and relationships with superiors and subordinates. • Low values of PDI - there is little or no distinction among hierarchy of an organization. Individuals are almost expected to raise concerns and express their own opinion • High values of PDI - the boss has great authority over subordinates. Superiors issue directives and expect subordinates to follow • This becomes an issue when utilizing a management approach “team of respected peers” where push back on issues is expected • Conflict about expectations of leadership • Recommendation: software project leadership be dispersed and each location have their local leaders

5. Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) • Japan 92 U.S.A 46 India 40 • Explores people’s attitudes towards tolerance for uncertainty about the future, risky situations, ambiguity, and control. • Low index culture are more risk takers, embrace change, more accepting of new ideas • High index culture try to reduce uncertainty through coping mechanisms like rigorous adherence to waterfall model, restrictive change control, wider consensus, and elaborate process to contemplate all possibilities. • Impacted design, analysis, documentation, up-front planning, project management and tracking • Recommendation: help avoid uncertainty through the use of prototyping; utilize detailed tracking and reporting mechanisms

6. Individualism (IDV) • U.S.A 91 India 48 Japan 46 • Focus on the perception of individualism versus collectivist. • Low index cultures - the welfare of the group is above the individual • High index cultures - people are primarily concerned about personal achievement, ambition, expect to have their own opinions • Influence the formation and continuance of teams. • Impacts the ability to form strong bonds among members and act cohesively, creates “Star performers” • Single out an individual performance may have big impact on team depending on the index. • Recommendation: Be aware of cultural differences during performances reviews

7. Areas impacted by culture • Software Architecture • May be culturally influenced • Design approach varies • Example on how abstractions are chosen • Configuration Management • Value on having centralized configuration management with public announcements. • Work structure can be defined by boundaries but will become issue when type of work crosses these boundaries like in performance tuning, bug fixing, integration.

8. Paper Critique • Strength • - Recognition that there is a cultural factor that impacts development projects • - Recommendations are valuable and should be explored • - The author is not trying to stereotype individuals • Weaknesses • - Lack of description of the behaviors and problems confronted in order to validate the conclusions • - Author seems to ignore other factors such as communication, organizational culture, team culture, and professional culture • -Problem can also be cause by different levels of Process Maturity across sites and organizations

9. Questions • 1-Briefly define the 3 cultural factors described on the paper? • 2-What are some of the areas impacted by the cultural factors? • 3-Do cultural differences affect software professionals?