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National Culture's Relationship to Project Team Performance

<p> The topic of the study was the relationship between national culture and software development project team performance. Relationships were examined through the lenses of Hofstede&rsquo;s cultural dimension model and the human performance technology model. Research indicated that software development project teams continue to face challenges completing projects within planned scope, on schedule, and within budget despite improved project management methods. The identified gap in the research was that most studies were qualitative and non-productivity related, a gap addressed by this quantitative, productivity-focused study. Four research questions were posed to determine the relationship between national culture and project team performance. Each question inquired as to the relationship between a team-level cultural measure and the number of user stories completed by the team during a sprint. The power distance (PDI) measures were the project team&rsquo;s average PDI and the PDI variance within the project team. The uncertainty avoidance (UAI) measures were the project team&rsquo;s average UAI and the UAI variance within the project team. A quantitative method was applied using a sample from the population of software development project teams that used the Agile management method. The data were extracted from archived productivity project data from 73 sprints conducted by teams from one firm. Archived email data identifying each team member&rsquo;s country of origin was used for each member&rsquo;s national culture. Spearman&rsquo;s rho was applied to the dataset. Results indicated there was a statistically significant relationship between PDI variance and team productivity, and between UAI variance and team productivity. The relationship between a team&rsquo;s average PDI and team productivity, and between the team&rsquo;s average UAI and team productivity, tended toward significance. Avenues for future research include duplicating the study using additional cultures and analyzing the relationship using additional Hofstede cultural dimensions.</p><p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10288883
Date06 September 2017
CreatorsSlater, Lori
PublisherCapella University
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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