What You Use is What You Get: Unforced Errors in Studying Cultural Aspects in Agile Software Development

TL;DR

This study highlights the importance of case-specific cultural analysis in agile software development research, revealing significant deviations from expected cultural traits based on Hofstede's model, which can impact project outcomes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that cultural characteristics often differ from national stereotypes, emphasizing the need for tailored cultural assessments in empirical software engineering studies.

Findings

Cultural traits varied significantly from expected national profiles.

Case-specific analysis is essential for accurate cultural understanding.

Cultural influences on agile practices are complex and context-dependent.

Abstract

Context: Cultural aspects are of high importance as they guide people's behaviour and thus, influence how people apply methods and act in projects. In recent years, software engineering research emphasized the need to analyze the challenges of specific cultural characteristics. Investigating the influence of cultural characteristics is challenging due to the multi-faceted concept of culture. People's behaviour, their beliefs and underlying values are shaped by different layers of culture, e.g., regions, organizations, or groups. In this study, we focus on agile methods, which are agile approaches that focus on underlying values, collaboration and communication. Thus, cultural and social aspects are of high importance for their successful use in practice. Objective: In this paper, we address challenges that arise when using the model of cultural dimensions by Hofstede to characterize specific cultural values. This model is often used when discussing cultural influences in software engineering. Method: As a basis, we conducted an exploratory, multiple case study, consisting of two cases in Japan and two in Germany. Contributions: In this study, we observed that cultural characteristics of the participants differed significantly from cultural characteristics that would typically be expected for people from the respective country. This drives our conclusion that for studies in empirical software engineering that address cultural factors, a case-specific analysis of the characteristics is needed.