What You Use is What You Get: Unforced Errors in Studying Cultural Aspects in Agile Software Development
Michael Neumann, Klaus Schmid, Lars Baumann
TL;DR
The paper interrogates the use of Hofstede's national cultural dimensions to study agile software development, arguing that context strongly reshapes observed cultural values. Through an exploratory embedded multiple case study of four agile teams in Japan and Germany, and using the ITIM Cultural_Survey for data collection, the authors reveal significant deviations from Hofstede's national profiles—particularly in uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation—within agile contexts. They conclude that case-specific analyses are necessary to accurately assess cultural influences on agile practice and propose three recommendations to improve validity in empirical software engineering research. The work highlights the practical impact of context-aware cultural measurement for interpreting team dynamics, collaboration, and the successful application of agile methods in multi-cultural settings.
Abstract
Context: Cultural aspects are of high importance as they guide people's behaviour and thus, influence how people apply methods and act in projects. In recent years, software engineering research emphasized the need to analyze the challenges of specific cultural characteristics. Investigating the influence of cultural characteristics is challenging due to the multi-faceted concept of culture. People's behaviour, their beliefs and underlying values are shaped by different layers of culture, e.g., regions, organizations, or groups. In this study, we focus on agile methods, which are agile approaches that focus on underlying values, collaboration and communication. Thus, cultural and social aspects are of high importance for their successful use in practice. Objective: In this paper, we address challenges that arise when using the model of cultural dimensions by Hofstede to characterize specific cultural values. This model is often used when discussing cultural influences in software engineering. Method: As a basis, we conducted an exploratory, multiple case study, consisting of two cases in Japan and two in Germany. Contributions: In this study, we observed that cultural characteristics of the participants differed significantly from cultural characteristics that would typically be expected for people from the respective country. This drives our conclusion that for studies in empirical software engineering that address cultural factors, a case-specific analysis of the characteristics is needed.