Multicultural Software Development: The Productivity Perspective

Productivity management is a challenge for software engineering companies and, in this regard, there is a current trend toward globalization. Via acquisitions and mergers, business has become international and employs different national cultures. Therefore, the focus of this article is on the understanding of cultural differences affecting productivity in globalized software production. The relation between productivity and non coding activities in software development projects has not been proven. Software development is expert work, typically made in closely collaborating local teams and global distribution of expert work increases the degree of difficulty. In this paper, the authors analyze multicultural ICT companies from their productivity perspective through the lens of cultural differences. The purpose of this study is to report findings based on general cultural studies and reported experiences that seem to affect productivity in the software industry. Some company cases are also described and analyzed.