Establishing a Global Software Development Course: A Cultural Perspective

Global software development (GSD) is one of the main practices in software industry. The ability to outsource and manage software development at remote sites allows organizations to benefit from GSD since they get access to a wider and more economically feasible pool of developers. Recently, global software engineering courses are being introduced at academic institutes as part of computer science and software engineering degree requirements. There are many challenges associated with managing and executing globally distributed software projects in academic settings. In this paper, we will attempt to analyze the framework and components of a collaborative global software engineering course from a cultural perspective. We examine the different challenges related to team-setting, grading, communication tools, gender issues and associated risks. A discussion of how cultural differences may affect setting up the course is included. The uniqueness of the proposed research lies in two main areas: it examines collaboration between Kuwait, USA and Poland; and it investigates the proposed topics from a cultural perspective.