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'."

Comments

Company Policy also matters.

[SenseiLeNoir]

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.

Re:Where Does Europe Fit In This?

[Matthias Wiesmann]

Actually, in the article the divisions are not simply East vs West. The authors highlight many difference between people from Europe (they give example with German and French people) from people from the US. As usual, the slashdot title is misleading.

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).

Re:Which East? Which West?

[Dun Malg]

When I first started reading the article, I figured they were talking about New York versus California. I've worked on bi-coastal projects, and the cultural differences in how things get decided (and even coding styles) are palpable.

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.

Re:Quit Your Crying

[dryeo]

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