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Culture Sensitive Aspects in Software Engineering

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Conceptual Modelling and Its Theoretical Foundations

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7260))

Abstract

The characteristics of software engineering (SE) are changing rapidly. The following trends are easy to notice: the transfer from plan driven development to agile development, the transfer towards distributed and multicultural teams and organization structure, the increasing importance of services related to software products or software itself, transfer towards cloud implementation of information systems. Even as agile software development is encouraging active interaction inside teams and between the developers and the clients, distributed work is increasing its difficulty. The problems of distribution itself can be solved by tools and techniques, e.g. by improved version and configuration management, careful asset repository management, tools forcing the production of unified specifications, and tools supporting communication in a distributed development context. When software organizations are multicultural, one additional dimension of difficulty appears. Even in a single unit, differences in cultural background may cause problems, but the problems become emphasized especially in the case of distributed work. The same problem also appears in software related services: to an increasing extent the service chain is distributed across cultural borders. Process models are used to provide means for the better management of software engineering and services. Predefined processes force the developers to follow the given guidelines throughout the organization – regardless of the geographical location and cultural background of the employees. This is also the expectation of managers. A slightly more careful look at the real situation gives a different view: some processes are more culture sensitive than others, and the practices are “tuned” to follow the rules of the culture. This paper opens up the discussion on the cultural aspects in connection with software engineering, taking into account especially the role of national cultures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tampere University of Technology, P.O. Box 300, FI-28101, Pori, Finland

    Hannu Jaakkola

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  1. Hannu Jaakkola
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Antje Düsterhöft Meike Klettke Klaus-Dieter Schewe

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Jaakkola, H. (2012). Culture Sensitive Aspects in Software Engineering. In: Düsterhöft, A., Klettke, M., Schewe, KD. (eds) Conceptual Modelling and Its Theoretical Foundations. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7260. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28279-9_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28279-9_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28278-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28279-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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