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“When in Rome, do as the romans do”: cultural barriers to being agile in distributed teams
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering. SINTEF ICT, NOR.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1744-3118
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering.
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering. SINTEF ICT, NOR.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2669-0778
2020 (English)In: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing AGILE PROCESSES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND EXTREME PROGRAMMING (XP 2020) / [ed] Stray V.,Hoda R.,Paasivaara M.,Kruchten P., Springer , 2020, Vol. 383, p. 145-161Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

With the growing interest of adopting agile methods in offshored process, many companies realized that the use of agile methods and practices in companies located outside the location of early adopters of agile methods may be challenging. India, the main destination of offshoring contracts, have received particular attention, due to the big cultural differences. Critical analysis of related studies suggests that impeding behaviors are mostly rooted in the hierarchical culture of Indian organizations and related management behavior of command-and-control. But what happens in distributed projects with a more empowering onshore management? In this paper, we present the findings from a multiple-case study of DevOps teams with members from a mature agile company located in Sweden and a more hierarchical offshore vendor from India. Based on two focus groups we list culturally different behaviors of offshore engineers that were reported to impede agile ways of working. Furthermore, we report the findings from surveying 36 offshore team members from five DevOps teams regarding their likely behavior in situations reported to be problematic. Our findings confirm a number of previously reported behaviors rooted in cultural differences that impede the adoption of agile ways of working when collaborating with offshore engineers. At the same time, our survey results suggest that among the five surveyed teams there were teams that succeeded with the cultural integration of the offshore team members. Finally, our findings demonstrate the importance of cultural training especially when onboarding new team members. © The Author(s) 2020.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer , 2020. Vol. 383, p. 145-161
Series
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, ISSN 18651348, E-ISSN 18651356
Keywords [en]
Agile, Cultural differences, Culture, Distributed agile teams, Distributed development, DevOps, Offshore oil well production, Personnel training, Surveys, Command and control, Critical analysis, Cultural difference, Distributed projects, Distributed teams, Management behavior, Multiple-case study, Offshore engineers, Software design
National Category
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-20018DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-49392-9_10ISI: 000724681400010ISBN: 9783030493912 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-20018DiVA, id: diva2:1448830
Conference
21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark, 8 June 2020 through 12 June 2020
Part of project
Governance in large-scale distributed agile projects - GOLD, Knowledge Foundation
Funder
The Research Council of Norway, 267704Knowledge Foundation, 2016/0191
Note

Open access

Available from: 2020-06-29 Created: 2020-06-29 Last updated: 2022-05-09Bibliographically approved

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“When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do”(563 kB)609 downloads
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Šmite, DarjaGonzalez-Huerta, JavierMoe, Nils Brede

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