Toward a Framework of Cultural Effects on Software Development

Culture is one of the major concerns when companies choose offshore outsourcing for software development. However, cultural effects on software development are hard to measure. Therefore, culture is often ignored in offshore outsourcing contracts for software development, or treated as a patch-up issue in the software eventually delivered by the offshore entity. Either scenario might jeopardize the achievement of effective software solutions, or make it difficult for companies to achieve the economic benefits of outsourcing software development to offshore entities. To better understand cultural effects on software development, this paper develops a framework of the influences of offshore-country culture on software being developed for a foreign country. It examines culture’s effects on both the process and product aspects of offshore software development.