Cultural Impact on Requirements Engineering Activities: Bangladeshi Practitioners' View

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Bangladeshi cultural factors influence Requirements Engineering activities, highlighting the importance of cultural awareness for effective communication and conflict avoidance in diverse software development teams.

Contribution

It provides an initial exploration of cultural influences on RE in Bangladesh, a previously overlooked socio-cultural context, offering insights for culturally aware RE practices.

Findings

Cultural factors significantly impact RE activities in Bangladesh.

Awareness of cultural influences can improve stakeholder communication.

Understanding local culture helps prevent misunderstandings in RE processes.

Abstract

Requirements Engineering (RE) is one of the most interaction-intensive phases of software development. This means that RE activities might be especially impacted by stakeholders' national culture. Software development projects increasingly have a very diverse range of stakeholders. To future-proof RE activities, we need to help RE practitioners avoid misunderstandings and conflicts that might arise from not understanding potential Cultural Influences (CIs). Moreover, an awareness of CIs supports diversity and inclusion in the IT profession. Bangladesh has a growing IT sector with some unique socio-cultural characteristics, and has been largely overlooked in this research field. In this study, we aim to investigate how the RE process is adopted in the context of Bangladeshi culture and what cultural influences impact overall RE activities.