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East vs. West: Culture and Distributed Development
CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue has an article entitled, Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams
that reviews differences in cultures and explores the impact they have on distributed software development teams. From the article: "In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision." Some stereotypes and some common sense, but I recognized myself in the descriptions of the 'typical American'."
We have taken over a software project for the UK gov from another company.
The previous company appeared to be lost in touch with the requirements of the client. Althoguh they had a lot of good coders, things were not implemented to the clients liking. The greatest problem was that only the project managers maintained contact with the client.
Our policy on the other hand has greater client interaction at all levels. And despite the development team being a tenth of the size of the previous company, everyone gets involved, are creative in their solutions, and less time is wasted coding and then correcting irrelevent features.
If there is any greater case for NOT outsourcing software projects to offshore, our case is a good example.
Have a nice day!
I must say that the article does not surprise me, as many of the things they mention I have observed myself (including the French love for object-orientation).
When bell atlantic combined with GTE to become verizon, the powerrs-that-be decided to make bell atlantic the "management" and replaced all the west coast GTE exec positions with BA people. The stodgy east coast guys were infuriated by the laid-back california work style, so they installed GPS transponders on all trucks and instituted random monitoring. Now if you stop to take a crap, they'll page you and demand to know what you're doing at a [gas station/restaurant/whatever] for more than a couple minutes. It's insane.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams
ACM Queue vol. 1, no. 9 - December/January 2003-2004
by Judith S. Olson, University of Michigan; Gary M. Olson, University of Michigan and Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work
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recommend to a colleague
sections in this article
1: You Can't Hide from Culture
2: Dimensions of Culture
3: Cultural Differences in Development Teams
4: Groupware and Cultural Differences
5: An Emerging Internet Culture
6: References
"When in Rome" doesn't help when your team crosses time zones--and your deadline doesn't.
You Can't Hide from Culture
Technology has made it possible for organizations to construct teams of people who are not in the same location, adopting what one company calls "virtual collocation."1 Worldwide groups of software developers, financial analysts, automobile designers, consultants, pricing analysts, and researchers are examples of teams that work together from disparate locations, using a variety of collaboration technologies that allow communication across space and time.
Although solving the problems of space and time is difficult, these are not the only issues. Work that takes place over long distances means that communication will often involve different cultures. Participants may be surprised by such interactions because they have not considered various cultural differences and how they impact the daily work of long-distance teams. Our own culture is invisible to us. "We don't see our own ways of doing things as conditioned in the cradle," writes Esther Wanning, author of Culture Shock! USA. "We see them as correct, and we conclude that people from other countries have grave failings."2
The goal of this article is to review various cultural differences likely to appear in the work setting and explore their implications for virtual collocation of software development teams. We begin with a definition of culture and various dimensions of cultural difference that have emerged. Then we examine two cases: (1) one in which the team members are collocated; and (2) one involving the team in virtual collocation. From this analysis we draw some practical implications.
CULTURE AND ITS DIMENSIONS
Larry Samovar and Richard Porter3 have defined culture as:
The deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Culture is acquired. It helps people categorize and predict their world by teaching them habits, rules, and expectations from the behavior of others. It helps people "read" the world's signals--the meaning of symbols of artifacts, gestures, and accoutrements of others.4 Culture also molds the way people think: what their motivations are, how they categorize things, what inference and decision procedures they use, and the basis on which they evaluate themselves.5 It sets the gestures, space, and timing of interactions.6
There are multiple kinds of culture: national, regional, occupational, organizational, avocational, and generational. Any of these might have important effects. Here we focus on national culture, assuming that knowing at least what a member of a culture shares with others is helpful in understanding how to interpret unusual behaviors. There are cultural explanations and new signals to read in understanding various interactions with people who are unlike oneself.
JUDITH S. OLSON is the Richard W. Pew professor of human computer interaction at the University of Michigan. She is a professor in the computer and information systems department of the business school and the school of information, as well as a professor of psychology. Her research focuses on how groups get their work done and how they feel about each other when they communicate over various digital media. S
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The continents are Asia and Europe. The landmass is called Eurasia. It's like referring to North and South America as the Americas. It is still two different continents.
It's not only in the IT field. Growing up in an Asian family in the United States, I've seen a lot of other cultural differences. Here are a few random ones:
1) It's not unusual for adult children to live in the parents' house until they are married or even after, until they find a place. In the US, sons and daughters are expected to leave the house as soon as possible.
2) American co-workers are a lot more relaxed around the supervisor or manager. The idea that an employee should do as much as possible to fulfill the boss' expectatations (applied to work only!) is seen as "ass kissing" by some.
3) Americans, in my experience, have a very difficult time with "personal space" issues. They get nervous or even hostile in close quarters. E.g., on a business trip American co-workers are more likely to complain if shared hotel rooms are necessary.
4) Americans tend to be extremely prudish versus Europeans. E.g., some co-workers got upset during a business trip because the German supervisor spent his after-hours time at the pool WITHOUT A SHIRT!
5) Americans are deeply concerned about individual freedoms versus community rights. E.g., they're more like Kirk than Spock. In the academic field they tend to see knowledge, in itself, as a worthy goal. This is different than the Eastern view that knowledge can be a distraction to truth. It's difficult to summarize and I'm not doing the arguments justice and I'm still debating the merits of both.
6) American males tend to look at themselves in the mirror very often. This is probably the biggest difference I've seen between Asian, European, and American males. Americans primp and preen more than anyone except for the three French folks I know -- they're *extremely* concerned about how others perceive them. It sounds like a stereotype but I've seen this firsthand many, many times.
7) Related to (6) -- American and European males are extremely defensive about "gay" jokes. A term of endearment such as, "I love him" -- one meant without any "gay" connotation at all -- makes Americans very uncomfortable. Asians I know don't mention personal
things like that. I expect they would be very offended if someone implied they were batting for the other team.
8) Related to (8) -- Americans, English (from England) and Israelis seem to like the whole "macho" thing. Sports, fights, tough talking.
Take these all with a grain of salt. These are my personal experiences and my experience isn't that vast. This is also anonymous, so don't waste your mod points either way.
The concern is not over new and different things, but rather with safety and control. How can we prove that GM foods do not have effects on humans or on the environment? Once we plant them, GM plants are prone to a variety of interaction with the environment, some of these interaction may trigger a exchange of genetic material. We cannot control it, so we try to be cautious.
Opposition to embryonic research on the other had is generally tied to moral and religious arguments. It's like comparing apples to oranges.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision."
The "West" is a complex, stratified society with more hierarchies than Chinese society for example, and these tend to be much more arbtrary -- 'race' for example. Caste and such in India are misunderstood as being the result of oppression, not differentiation of the means of production in agrarian societies. That oppression exists in caste-based societies is a fact. That it is the result of the very caste structure itself not the means of its control and manisfestation is what you can't get through to people. Anyhow, creative thinking is not the exclusive domain of "Western" culture. And assuming that it occurs on an individual level ignores socialization as a culural force.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Name me a country in the world that has a population as diverse as ours. Show me another place that has such a wide variety of culture. Honestly, if it can be pointed out that somewhere else in the world there is a place where more cultures co-exist than the United States, I will jump on that bandwagon right away. But, I don't think that place exists.
Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
A lot of times younger people have better ideas whereas the so called "adults" are just morons going thru the motions.
That's true. However a lot of the time younger people simply have no experience, don't know what they're talking about, and are too self-absorbed to realize they're spouting forth stupidity in it's most pure form.
A mark of maturity is knowing when to shut up.
Indeed, having facts just might help a little. Mosiac wasn't the first browser; it came onto the scene a good two years after the first website, and Tim Berners-Lee invented HTTP and HTML while working at CERN, in Switzerland.
According to NCSA's own page, Mosaic started development in June of 1993. The first webserver, info.cern.ch, went online in 1991.
IIRC Toronto and Vancouver are the two most ethnically diverse cities in the world...heard that on TV the other day so I can't really post a reference.
Also, IIRC, Canada doesn't have a majority population anymore. The ethnic majority (anglo-saxon?) fell below 50% about 10 years ago.
There are definantly less hispanics in Canada, but there are huge asian communities.