The impact of global software cultural and linguistic aspects on Global Software Development process (GSD): Issues and challenges

Abstract

In the last decade, we witnessed the dramatic transformation of software development processes. The transformation from single-site, mostly English-based into a multi-site, multilingual, multicultural, and globally distributed endeavor has marked the birth of Global Software Development (GSD). Based on an extensive review to the published literature we found that most of the attention has turned towards understanding the impact of culture on the GSD process. However, little research addresses the impact of the cultural and linguistic aspects of global software globally developed. Understanding the impact of culture on the GSD enable multinational development teams to communicate and operate successfully. Global software is multilingual and multicultural software. The multilingual and multicultural aspects are very critical to success. While the main purpose of this paper is to encourage more research in this topic, we will take a critical look at Hofstede's popular cultural model and how it is applied to global software development. Then we will briefly discuss the impact of the cultural and linguistic aspects of global software on the GSD process. These aspects affect directly the quality of the software, as well as the GSD process itself.