Cultural influence on RE activities: An extended analysis of state of the art
Chowdhury Shahriar Muzammel, Maria Spichkova, James Harland
TL;DR
The paper investigates how national culture shapes RE activities in mobile software development. Using a systematic literature review of 2019–2023 and a comparator with 2000–2018, it identifies 33 cultural influences on RE, 31 of which map to Hofstede dimensions, including 16 newly discovered influences. The methodology combines manual and automated searches, strict inclusion/exclusion criteria, quality assessment, and thematic analysis to extract cultural factors and relate them to RE stages. The findings highlight an increasing research trend and provide actionable guidance for integrating cultural considerations across elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, and management in RE. This work offers practitioners, researchers, and educators a Hofstede-based lens to improve communication, requirement gathering accuracy, and collaboration in culturally diverse software development teams.}
Abstract
Designing mobile software that aligns with cultural contexts is crucial for optimizing human-computer interaction. Considering cultural influences is essential not only for the actual set of functional/non-functional requirements, but also for the whole Requirement Engineering (RE) process. Without a clear understanding of cultural influences on RE activities, it's hardly possible to elaborate a correct and complete set of requirements. This research explores the impact of national culture on RE-related activities based on recent studies. We conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of studies published in 2019-2023 and compared them to an older SLR covering 2000-2018. We identified 17 relevant studies, extracted 33 cultural influences impacting RE activities, and mapped them to the Hofstede model, widely used for cultural analysis in software development research. Our work highlights the critical role of national culture in RE activities, summarizes current research trends, and helps practitioners consider cultural influences for mobile app/software development.