The Influence of Cultural Differences on the Business Analysis Process in Globally Distributed IT Companies : A case study of Turkey and Poland branches of an IT Corporation

Abstract: Today, globally distributed software development is an unstoppable trend in Information Technology (IT) all over the world due to the benefits it provides such as cost benefits, time saving, accessing the large labor pool and available resources. However, globally distributed software companies face some issues in this regard. Cultural differences are introduced and discussed as one of the fundamental issues in globally distributed IT companies. Further, it is evident from the literature that business analysis process is the fundamental phase of software development process that affects the entire process of software development, and requires effective communication and collaboration among teams and between team members. Globally distributed software development makes the business analysis process and its related sub-phases even much more complicated than it is. Therefore, in this study, the influence of cultural differences on globally distributed business analysis process is analyzed. In order to do that, I conduct a qualitative study in which employees of the Turkey and Poland branches of the GTECH IT Company are interviewed. Hence, in this study remote project team member are asked about varying cultural differences that I extract from several existing cultural models and unify them into an integrated model. There are many studies exist about cultural differences in literature and these studies has similarity and differences which are creating complexity for readers and researchers. Hence, in this research Hofstede’s, Hall’s and Trompenaars’ cultural frameworks are unified and then I develop a new cultural model. By applying this new framework or model I investigated the influence of varying cultural differences on business analysis process that is conducted in a globally distributed IT company.