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Global Software Development: Practices for Cultural Differences

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11271))

Abstract

Drivers for globalization are significant where today’s organizations look for cheaper and faster ways to develop software as well as ways to satisfy quality and investment requirements imposed by customers, shareholders, and governments. Given these needs, Global Software Development (GSD) has become a “normal” way of doing business. Working in GSD often require teams of different cultures to work together. A poor understanding of cultural differences can create barriers to trust or missed opportunities. The literature on culture in GSD is either outdated or disparate, requiring practitioners to read many papers to get an overview of how to manage multi-cultural teams. In this study, we aim to highlight how to increase cultural awareness within teams, avoid potential conflict and harness differences for improved team spirit. To answer our research question, “How should cultural differences be managed, identified and communicated to a GSD team?”, we conducted a systematic literature review of the GSD literature. A synthesis of solutions found in nineteen studies provided 12 distinct practices that organizations can implement, to include, “provide a cultural knowledge base”, “understand and make team members aware of cultural differences” and “plan responses to mitigate occurrences of cultural misunderstandings”. These implementable cultural practices go some way to providing solutions to managing multi-cultural development teams, and thus to support one of the problem dimensions in GSD and embrace cultural differences.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant no. 13/RC/2094.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science (DC), Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), Recife, PE, Brazil

    Marcelo Marinho

  2. Informatics Center (CIn), Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, PE, Brazil

    Alexandre Luna

  3. Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Marcelo Marinho & Sarah Beecham

Authors
  1. Marcelo Marinho
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  2. Alexandre Luna
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  3. Sarah Beecham
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcelo Marinho .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Clausthal, Goslar, Germany

    Marco Kuhrmann

  2. Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Kurt Schneider

  3. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Dietmar Pfahl

  4. Okayama Prefectural University, Okayama, Japan

    Sousuke Amasaki

  5. QAware GmbH, Munich, Germany

    Marcus Ciolkowski

  6. Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Regina Hebig

  7. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Paolo Tell

  8. Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Jil Klünder

  9. Clausthal University of Technology, Goslar, Germany

    Steffen Küpper

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Marinho, M., Luna, A., Beecham, S. (2018). Global Software Development: Practices for Cultural Differences. In: Kuhrmann, M., et al. Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11271. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03673-7_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03673-7_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03672-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03673-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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