Enhancing Agile methods for multi-cultural software project teams

Abstract

It is well documented that software projects are typically over schedule, over budget and often do not meet user requirements. The main problems are all associated with people related issues. In order to address this problem the Agile philosophy was introduced with an associated portfolio of Agile methods. These methods are specifically designed to improve software project team management. However it is now increasingly common for software projects to have multicultural team members. It is well documented that people from different cultures have considerably different expectations and methods of interacting in a team environment. In order to address this problem cultural specific Agile attributes were defined based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions. The result of this study gives an insight to how cultural differences may affect a software methodology implementation, specifically Agile and how these problems can be addressed. Hence it is possible to select appropriate 'culture and Agile specific attributes' when working with multicultural software project team to help software development projects with agile methods. © Canadian Center of Science and Education.