Global Software Development: Practices for Cultural Differences

TL;DR

This paper reviews practices for managing cultural differences in global software development, emphasizing increasing cultural awareness, communication, and conflict mitigation to improve team collaboration and effectiveness.

Contribution

It identifies and synthesizes 12 practical cultural management practices for GSD teams from existing literature, providing a consolidated guide for practitioners.

Findings

12 distinct cultural practices identified

Emphasis on cultural awareness and communication

Strategies for conflict mitigation and team cohesion

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 The literature on culture in GSD is either outdated or disparate, requiring practitioners to read many papers to get an overview of how to manage multi-cultural teams.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.