Cross-Cultural Risk Assessment Model

Due to the increasing of cooperation with global, cultural differences are specified as work factors in distributed projects. This paper aims at identifying quantitatively the cross cultural risk assessment. The cultural differences; language, communication style, time, and development method are examined as critical risk factors that affect the software development project. The mathematical model has been designed to quantify the effect of cultural differences of team members. Begin with the fundamental formula of the risk assessment, “Risk = Probability of the event ´ Losses associated with that event”, the probability is estimated from the average number of conflicts in software development team, by means of the Poisson’s process; the losses of each factor was estimated in term of their levels. The output from the model can be used in the risk management to increase achievements of the project.

[1]  R. Davison Offshoring information technology: Sourcing and outsourcing to a global workforce , 2006, Electron. J. Inf. Syst. Dev. Ctries..

[2]  Kevin C. Desouza,et al.  A dimensional analysis of geographically distributed project teams: A case study , 2004 .

[3]  Eileen M. Trauth,et al.  Cultural influences and globally distributed information systems development: experiences from Chinese IT professionals , 2007, SIGMIS CPR '07.

[4]  Brian Nicholson,et al.  Global IT Outsourcing: Cross-cultural communication challenges: GSAs between Japanese and Indian firms , 2003 .

[5]  M. J. Earl,et al.  The Risks of Outsourcing IT , 1996 .

[6]  Mary Beth Rosson,et al.  Board-Based Collaboration in Cross-Cultural Pairs , 2007, IWIC.

[7]  M. W. Lustig,et al.  Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures , 1998 .

[8]  Raymond H. Myers,et al.  Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists. , 1973 .

[9]  Jane Barber project management templates , 2010 .

[10]  J.D. Herbsleb,et al.  Global software development at Siemens: experience from nine projects , 2005, Proceedings. 27th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2005. ICSE 2005..

[11]  David N. Ford,et al.  A real options approach to valuing strategic flexibility in uncertain construction projects , 2002 .

[12]  Haiyan Huang,et al.  Global IT Outsourcing: Software Development across Borders , 2004 .

[13]  Judith N. Martin,et al.  Experiencing intercultural communication : an introduction , 2001 .

[14]  Juha Taina,et al.  Distributed Cross-Cultural Student Software Project: A Case Study , 2005, 18th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEET'05).

[15]  Suzanne Rivard,et al.  Toward an Assessment of Software Development Risk , 1993, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[16]  R. H. Myers,et al.  Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists , 1978 .

[17]  Erran Carmel,et al.  Global software teams: collaborating across borders and time zones , 1999 .

[18]  J. Herbsleb,et al.  Global software development , 2001 .

[19]  Georgios A. Dafoulas,et al.  Investigating Cultural Differences in Virtual Software Teams , 2002, Electron. J. Inf. Syst. Dev. Ctries..