MIS 648 Presentation Notes: Lecture 12

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MIS 648 Presentation Notes Lecture 12

• Meeting the Challenges of Developing Systems
  Internationally

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AGENDA

• Introduction to the lecture
• Goal of the Lecture
• Global Software Teams, revisited
• Culture and IS Development Decisions (Heales, et
  al.)

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Basic Issues

• Software development is complicated by being
  dispersed across national boundaries
• Projects are driven by economics, strategy and
  management that produce global teams
• Technology both drives as well as enables global
  team practice

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What Makes These Teams SO Hard to Manage?

• Is it something about IT?
• Volatile, complicated, culturally specific?
• Is it something about IT people?
• Challenge oriented, uncommunicative, mobile,
  unconnected to firm?
• Is it something about ITs role in organizations?
• Unclear, underresourced, unrepresented, not
  included in planning, high stress?

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Our Basic Model of IT Project Management Success
IT Project Outcomes
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Bad Things
Team cannot function software cannot be produced
at all
All aspects of team production become uncertain.
Upper management/client lose trust in team

• Team disintegrates
• Team management loses control
• Team produces awful products
• Team cannot sustain products
• Team creates sustaining problems
• Team destroys client

Quality is hard to guarantee when team isnt
functioning coherently
Team doesnt have any long-term presence and
hence cannot maintain products
Product produces problems forever or odor of
project experience lingers beyond project
Product or project experience is so bad that
client cannot function
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Push-Pull

• Forces Countering Global Teamwork
• Mostly due to distance
• Also culture
• Result makes it harder to manage team, ensure
  quality, keep to design promises

• Forces Empowering Global Teamwork
• Mostly assisted by technology
• Also good management practice on a global basis
• Leadership is important

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Global Software Teams
Cohesion
Source Erran Carnel Global Software Teams A
Framework for Managerial Problems and Solutions,
2002.
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Group Life Cycle Revisited
Developing and delivering software
Working out the development rules, refining them
Staffing, instructing the group
Negotiating who does what, how, when
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Global Software Teams -- Advice
Encourage lateral communication and
coordination Be more formal, yet more informal,
too Give everyone a 360o view Establish trust
early in the project and foster it
throughout Establish a team memory Be aware of
culture and language
Items in red are especially important in global
software teams
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Global Software Teams Critique of Advice

• Communication Structure techniques tend to be
  labor intensive and expensive where technology is
  involved
• Formal/informal is important, but very difficult
  to do in practice
• 360-degree view is OK, but events move faster
  than your planning and intentions.

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Global Software Teams Critique of Advice - 2

• Trust is hard to build, especially across
  cultures, and requires personal commitment,
  travel, presence, risk sharing
• Team memory is good idea
• Culture is a real problem and not easily
  dismissed or taken into account.

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Now, Add in Culture

• Global software development teams are generally
  cross-cultural
• This includes offshoring activities, too (see
  next lectures)
• Globalization is only exacerbating potential and
  actual problems.
• Heales, et al examine the effects of national
  culture on IS development decisions rather than
  on development itself.

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Culture in this Research

• Organizational culture affects organizational
  decisions
• National culture affects organizational culture.
• Hofstede is abandoned for GLOBE (which is based
  on Hofstede) because of vagueness problems but
  does not address the stereotyping problems.

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The GLOBE Dimensions
These two meet some of the problems with
Individualism

• Power Distance (Hofstede)
• Uncertainty Avoidance (Hofstede)
• Institutional Collectivism (cf. Individism)
• Family Collectivism (cf. Individism)
• Humane Orientation (cf. Masculinity)
• Performance Orientation
• Future Orientation (later Hofstede)
• Gender Egalitarianism (cf. Masculinity)
• Assertiveness (Masculinity)

These two meet some of the problems with
Masculinity
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Adaptive Maintenance Changes

• Research looks at decision making with regard to
  evolution of system in terms of either
  enhancement (addition, improvement) or
  redevelopment (replacement)
• Because culture affects decision making, it
  should also affect adaptive maintenance decision
  making as well as the level at which decision
  making is performed.

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The Basic Model
PDistance
-
UAvoidance
FutureOrient
InstitutCollm
FamilyCollm
HumaneOrien
PerfomOrien
GenderEgal
Assert
All influences are unless otherwise noted.
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Research Method

• Data on 1238 projects worldwide from 2000 was
  used 421 were eliminated because not all GLOBE
  dimensions were available.
• N817
• Used What is rather than what should be
  indicators of the GLOBE form
• It appears that the bulk of the data comes from
  English-speaking countries.

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Analysis

• Stepwise multiple regression was used
• Few of the relationships were found to be strong
• There was significant correlation of dimensions

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The Results
PDistance
UAvoidance
FutureOrient
InstitutCollm
FamilyCollm
HumaneOrien
PerfomOrien
GenderEgal
Assert
All influences are unless otherwise noted.
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The Results
FutureOrient
GenderEgal
Assert
InstitutCollm
FOltUS Italy GEltUS India
ASltUS Japan ICltUS Italy
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So What?

• How does this differ from how any team functions
  in todays globalized economy?
• What does the task add to the situation?
• What does IT culture add to the situation?
• What does the work environment add to the
  situation?