Research on Intercultural Teaching for RE Proposal for a Multi Case Study Andrea Herrmann Anne Hoffmann Herrmann & Ehrlich Software Engineering Institute Stuttgart, Germany Rijksuniversiteit Groningen herrmann@herrmann-ehrlich.de Groningen, The Netherlands a.hoffmann@rug.nl Rüdiger Weißbach Business Department Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg) Hamburg, Germany ruediger.weissbach@haw-hamburg.de Abstract—Intercultural aspects are important aspects in assumptions that are not shared by the others because it is not software engineering in teaching as well as in practice. In the part of their cultural background. This includes requirements engineering context, these topics are not so well misunderstandings about the meaning of software requirements addressed by research, and if they are, then in the meaning of and about work processes, and finally leads to software that national cultures. We expect that, besides this, the diverse does not conform to what the stakeholders really wanted. This “professional cultures” of the participants in the requirements engineering process are an equally important aspect. causes re-work, suboptimal project results and also negative This paper provides a first proposal for a research emotions among the parties. collaboration on intercultural aspects in requirements Despite this importance of culture for RE, we find only engineering teaching. We are searching partners for this study. little research on the intercultural differences in RE training. Index Terms Intercultural, interdisciplinary, research outline—. There are approaches to teach such socio-technical aspects A. Introduction and Motivation within the RE education [8], [15], [29] , but research on the different training needs in different cultures is missing. A Software engineering (SE) is a multi-step transformation of training concept which works well in one cultural context ideas into artifacts. In this process, Requirements Engineering might work less well in another context. In our definition, (RE) is the first step, in which the ideas of the future users or “culture” is not limited to national cultures, but also refers to their representatives (managers etc.) will be transformed in a professional and organizational cultures. In addition, more or less formalized representation. Not all participants in differences between different learning contexts like university this process are trained or experienced in methods of teaching, a workshop at a conference, or an in-house training in formalization (modeling, developing of algorithms etc.). The a company are considered different cultures. teaching of RE deals with methods of elicitation, To investigate such differences is important because the documentation and validation (see for instance the syllabus of quality of RE is known to be critical for the success of software the IREB Foundation Level [20]). The important intercultural projects [25]. This emphasizes the importance of the education aspects, however, are regularly not treated. of software practitioners [21] – regardless of whether RE is In the research on SE, we find studies about intercultural conducted in a formal RE process in heavyweight software aspects in international cooperation (e.g. [22],[28]), enforced development processes or conducted in a less formal way in by the trend to international software development outsourcing, agile processes. We plan a study which will test the hypothesis for example to India/Bangalore or Russia. These studies partly that there are differences between learners from different emphasize the aspects of different national cultures that cultures in terms of the learning succcess achieved or fun influence the handling of requirements, for example in the experienced. Depending on culture, some training concepts aspect of the non-critical acceptance of the requirement might work well in one culture and less in another. documents, even if they contain unrealistic requirements. This paper presents an initial outline for setting up a Cultural differences are listed as one of many sources of research study that is open for interested colleagues – teachers, challenges in distributed development, e.g. in [5], [10], [11], trainers and researchers. During the REET workshop, we want [12], [23]. Cultural differences lead to misunderstandings that to receive feedback concerning the planned study and its happen when the communicating parties make tacit internationalization. Moreover, REET gives us a unique opportunity to meet and discuss with potential cooperation There is not as much literature on professional cultures as partners especially outside Europe. on national or organizational cultures. Herkenhoff measures differences between professional cultures using the Hofstede dimensions [13]. She points out the relationship between the B. Definition: Culture professional cultures and the national cultures: “Just as The term “culture” is understood differently. According to Hofstede notes that national culture is not genetically shared Hofstede [16], culture is characterized by six factors: but is passed down between groups, the same holds true for Power distance, Individualism vs. collectivism, Uncertainty professional culture.” [13] One aspect for example is the long- avoidance index, Masculinity, Long-term orientation vs. short term vs. short-term orientation of professions [2]. In this term orientation, Indulgence versus restraint [16]. dimension, computer programmers and other people engaged Hofstede defines culture as “the collective programming of in project work may be short-term focused. the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category Herkenhoff [13] developed a Professional Culture of people from another” [17]. However, we also (at least questionnaire (PC08) based on Hofstede/Bond as a tool for informally) talk about different cultures when talking about measuring along the dimensions of Power, Time, Risk, Service cultures of companies, cultures in different professional and Team. In her study, she compares professional culture disciplines, types of teaching environments (e.g. university rankings of people working in accounting, IT support, sales and versus on-the job training), etc. In some disciplines, science. Referring to the five dimensions of professional stereotyped archetypes of persons and their character behavior culture (Power, Time, Risk, Service, Team) IT staff shows high exist. This is for instance reflected in the assumption all ranking values for team orientation and service, but only low information scientists being bad communicators and bad team values for long term orientation. workers, or in jokes that address the brevity of students in PC08 can be used as questionnaire for our study. technical topics. A previous study on communication problems in The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: distributed software development has found cultural differences Section II summarizes the current situation in research on not only between countries, but also between different intercultural aspects in RE. Section III sets up the research organizational cultures, between younger and older people, and design for our multi case study research project. Section IV between different professional cultures (like software discusses the research design and Section V summarizes the developers versus managers or customers) [26]. Another study paper and the possible next steps. within India showed that even within one country, one can find large cultural differences [3]. II. LITERATURE ON INTERCULTURAL ASPECTS IN RE 1) Interculturality: International aspects TEACHING Hofstede defines that “The category can refer to nations, regions within or across nations, ethnicities, religions, In an initial literature research, we aimed at gathering the occupations, organizations, or the genders.” [17] This basic definitions in our domain of research and to understand dimension of interculturality is widely accepted and discussed the state of research, in order to help us design our study. A in science and in practical work and trainings. more systematic literature analysis will be part of the study. First of all, we searched for work about basic concepts 2) Interculturality: Organizational Cultures from outside the RE community (by Hofstede, Herkenhoff and Organizational culture is – according to [24] – “the pattern others), especially on cultural aspects in work life. of basic assumptions, that a given group has invented, We analyzed the publications of the workshop discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems “Requirements Engineering in Education and Training of external adaption and internal integration”. The (REET)”, expecting to find information and results close to organizational culture focuses on the internal relationships in our questions, as the workshop’s theme is closest to our an organization. The learning experiences of a company, its research topic. REET takes place in conjunction with the IEEE strategy and its tradition are important aspects. Hofstede [19] conference Requirements Engineering (RE) since 2005. Our lists the following dimensions of organizational culture: means- approach was as follows: We analyzed all existing REET oriented vs. goal-oriented, internally driven vs. externally publications and their abstracts, screened the abstracts for key driven, Easygoing work discipline vs. Strict work discipline, word such as “intercultural” or “interdisciplinary”, and Local vs. Professional, Open system vs. Closed system, subsequently found three papers relevant for further Employee-oriented vs. Work-oriented, Degree of acceptance of processing [6],[9],[27]. These papers, we read in depth. leadership style, Degree of identification with your organization. Beyond the REET publications, we gathered further work These dimensions will affect the process of Requirements about cultural aspects in software engineering. Engineering. Overhage, Skroch and Turowski [22] developed a method to evaluate requirement specifications. In this context, they 3) Interculturality: Professional Cultures analyzed factors in the context of the requirement specification process in offshoring projects. The understanding of the means national culture, but also professional cultures as domains, aspects of communication and culture as well as discussed above and also differences between different learning learning relationships had been indicated as relevant.. contexts like university teaching, a workshop at a conference, Gotel et al. [9] conducted an experiment with students from an in-house training in a company. USA, Cambodia, Thailand and India. Their task was to write a requirements document, and the previous knowledge of the C. Research Phases participants was unevenly distributed. To cope with these conditions, the trainers applied coaching and requirements The phases of the study are proposed as follows: reviews. International aspects are not discussed, but rather the 1) Research Project Setup students’ learning effects. We search for research partners outside Germany, Svahnberg et al. [27] stated “a large difference between the especially also outside of Europe. These partners can be priorities of Industry Managers and Industry Developers”. For university teachers, trainers and researchers. The final research industry managers the aspects of product planning should have design will be a developed among all partners to incorporate higher priority, for developers, development and test are the specific constraints. most important. The authors see “a dichotomy between pre- 2) Extension of the literature research, project activities and in-project activities, where the managers especially by a systematic collection of existing research are more concerned with the pre-project activities and the results and teaching case studies developers focus more on the in-project activities.” This means, 3) Preparation the authors observed (role-dependent) different professional In order to control and align the conditions of the multiple cultures. case studies, course material will be developed jointly and then Gabrysiak et al. [6] worked with students from other translated in the necessary languages. The execution of the faculties without a software engineering background as “virtual course unit will be discussed and optimized in detail. Such stakeholders”, in order to introduce a semantic gap between course units can be role games, modeling exercises or requirements engineer and stakeholders. This showed to be simulations of whole software engineering projects. We can instructive for the RE students. The paper mainly discusses adapt exercises from our previous courses, and like this use how to instruct the virtual stakeholders in order that they can be material that was used successfully in courses before. authentic. Examples of such RE courses like role games we discussed in a Bolten [1] suggests intercultural management games to previous publication [14]. train functional and professional aspects (p.17). The study will demand only simple tools and Herrmann, Hoffmann, Landes, Weißbach [14] describe infrastructures, like office software, meta plans, white boards training experiences from different settings with regard to the or a freeware UML tool. Dreyfus levels [4]. In these trainings, different aspects of The courses’ main objective is to teach RE. Executing the professional cultures have been emphasized: joint projects of experiment is secondary in importance. Therefore, the IT and business students respectively of IT and business additional effort for the participants created by the research professors demonstrate different professional demands, role must be minimized to a short questionnaire before the exercise games and improvisation theatre demand and teach empathy to and after. A teaching evaluation often takes place in trainings, people with different background. so this is no large extra effort for the participants. 4) Evaluation of courses The same course concept (or concepts) will be used in III. PROPOSAL FOR A MULTI CASE STUDY RESEARCH PROJECT different learning contexts and different countries. A. Preliminary Research Questions Experiences from each execution (case study) will be discussed in a telephone conference by all participating The planned research will investigate the following trainers, and course material will be optimized if necessary. research question: The learning context is described by the trainer in terms of Are there differences in learning success and perception of independent variables like the following: country, language in learning success, depending on the participants’ culture and which the training takes place, context (university, in-house further participant characteristics, the learning context and the training in a company, external training, workshop at a trainer characteristics? conference), group size, characteristics of the trainer (age, teaching experience, work experience, Dreyfus level [4] ). B. Research Approach In order to characterize the participants, data like the The research study will investigate courses and Best following shall be gathered before the experiment: age and Practices for RE training and teaching. However, what works work experience of the participants, their mother language and well in one cultural context might work less well in another home country (where they spent their school time). context. We will therefore experiment with different training Herkenhoff’s Professional Culture survey PC08 [13] is a base formats in different cultural context and compare the results, for analyzing aspects of professional culture. Hofstede’s Values like learning success by the participants, fun, and other Survey Module VSM 2013 [18] focusses on organizational quantitative and qualitative criteria. “Culture” here not only culture. These surveys could be used in the evaluation of aspects of professional and organizational culture. Further The proposed design project will not produce a “silver variables are possible. bullet” for RE training, but considering the lack of research on In order to measure the learning effect, the following data this topic, it will be a first step with impact on research as well could be gathered before the course unit: previous knowledge as on RE training. The experiences of this first research stage about what has to be learned, practical experience with what could be used for further international research projects on RE. has to be learned, Dreyfus level, actual knowledge (measured And it can help trainers to choose and adapt trainings concepts by a quick test). And after the course unit: actual knowledge to their audience. (measured by another quick test) and Dreyfus level. Also, the With the Hofstede dimensions for international and quality of the results of the course unit (e.g. models or organizational cultural aspects and the Herkenhoff dimensions documents) shall be quantified. we use proven concepts and tools that allow a reference to The course participants are also asked to comment on their other studies. own learning success, the fun they had, what they think about Threats to validity: Even with the same training material, the learning method, the type of exercise and the teacher´s the same exercise will be executed differently by different teaching style – quantitatively on Likert scales and qualitatively trainers. Therefore, we need data from multiple executions of as free text remarks [7]. the same course unit in the same culture, if possible by 5) Data Analysis different trainers. It will be analyzed statistically whether there are differences in learning success and perception of learning success, depending on the learning context, the participant V. SUMMARY characteristics and the trainer characteristics. This paper describes a proposal for an intercultural multi We will test the hypothesis that there are differences case study research project for evaluating RE training courses between learners from different cultures in terms of the in different cultural contexts and for discovering differences dependent variables we measure, e.g. quality of the result between these cultures. produced or fun experienced. Our next steps will be to find research partners and to refine There will also be a qualitative analysis of the free text the research design together. remarks of the participants. 6) Development of Best Practices From our analysis results, best practices for teaching RE in different cultures will be derived and summarized. As we look into intercultural research, we are fully aware that these best REFERENCES practices might recommend different practices for different [1] J. Bolten, “Was heißt ‘Interkulturelle Kompetenz?’ Perspektiven cultures, i.e. there might not be the one solution that fits all. für die international Personalentwicklung”, in J. Berninghausen Goeken and Patas [10] adapt the idea of an empirical and V. Künzer (eds.), Wirtschaft als interkulturelle evidence-based framework from medical research to RE Herausforderung: Business across Cultures, Berlin, 2007 research. They criticize a missing re-evaluation of results of [2] M. Bond, “Finding Unusual Dimensions of Individual Variation RE research. Typically, a research artifact is evaluated by the in multi‐Cultural Studies of Values: the Rokeach and Chinese researchers. This situation should be overcome by the Value Surveys”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, pp. 1009-1015, 1988. evaluation of results by third-party researchers. In this sense the suggested research project could be a way for improving [3] S. Deshpande, I. Richardson, V. Casey, and S. Beecham, “Culture in global software development”, Global Software the research quality. Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on, pages 67-76, 2010. [4] S. Dreyfus, H. Dreyfus: A five-stage model of the mental IV. DISCUSSION activities involved in direct skill acquisition, No. ORC-80-2. Univ. Berkeley Operations Research Center, 1980. Starting to investigate the importance of culture within RE [5] A.H. Dutoit, J. Johnstone and B. Bruegge, “Knowledge scouts: trainings might be (a little) like opening up a new dimension of Reducing communication barriers in a distributed software RE research. As we have outlined, the cultural aspects offer development project”, Proceedings of the Eighth Asia-Pacific on many dimensions to research. Combined with the multi-faceted Software Engineering Conference APSEC, IEEE, pp. 427-430, domain of RE this leads to many open questions, that can and 2001. will not all be answered within our research project. [6] G. Gabrysiak, H. Giese, A. Seibel, and S. Neumann, “Teaching Thus, even though we outline an interdisciplinary approach requirements engineering with vir- tual stakeholders without towards different aspects of culture in the context of RE software engineering knowledge,” in Requirements Engineering trainings, we will need to limit our research to parts of this new Education and Training (REET), 2010 5th International dimension. We clearly will not be able to answer all upcoming Workshop on, pp. 36–45, Sept 2010. questions, but will collect ideas and questions that remain [7] B.G. Glaser and A.L. Strauss, “The Discovery of Grounded unanswered. Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research”, New York, 1967. [8] M. Goeken, and J. Patas, „Evidence-Based Structuring and [19] The Hofstede Center: “Dimensions”, http://geert- Evaluation of Empirical Research in Requirements Engineering. hofstede.com/organisational-culture-dimensions.html, accessed Fundamentals, Framework, Research Map“, in Business May, 28th, 2014 Information Systems Engineering, 2010 ; original: [20] IREB: IREB Certified Professional for Requirements “Evidenzbasierte Strukturierung und Bewertung empirischer Engineering Syllabus, Version 2.1, December 20th 2012, Forschung im Requirements Engineering”, in http://www.ireb.org/fileadmin/IREB/Lehrplaene/IREB_cpre_syl Wirtschaftsinformatik 52 (2010), No 3, pp. 173-184, 2010 labus_FL_en_v21.pdf [9] O. Gotel, V. Kulkarni, M. Say, C. Scharff, and T. Sunetnanta, [21] T. Lethbridge, “A survey of the relevance of computer science “Distributing responsibilities to engineer better requirements: and software engineering education”, llth International Leveraging knowledge and perspectives for students to learn a Conference on Software Engineering, 1998 key skill,” in Require-ments Engineering Education and [22] S. Overhage, O. Skroch, and K. Turowski, „A Method to Training (REET), 2009 Fourth International Workshop on, pp. Evaluate the Suitability of Requirements Specifications for 28–37, Sept 2009. Offshore Projects“, in Business Information Systems [10] J. Grieb and U. Lindemann, “Design Communication in Engineering, 2010; original: „Eine Methode zur Bewertung der Industry: A Survey Analysis”, International Conference on Eignung von Anforderungsspezifikationen für Offshoring- Engineering Design ICED 05, pp. 586-587, 2005. Projekte“, in Wirtschaftsinformatik 52 (2010), No 3, pp. 149- [11] R.E. Grinter, J.D, Herbsleb and D.E. Perry, “The geography of 159, 2010 coordination: Dealing with distance in R&D work”, Proceedings [23] R. Prikladnicki, J.L.N. Audy and R. Evaristo, “An Empirical of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP Study on Global Software Development: Offshore Insourcing of 99), Phoenix, pp. 306-315, 1999. IT Projects”, Proceedings of the International Workshop on [12] J.D. Herbsleb, “Global Software Engineering: The Future of Global Software Development, International Conference on Socio-technical Coordination”, Proceeding FOSE '07 2007 Software Engineering (ICSE 2004), IEEE, Edinburgh, Scotland, Future of Software Engineering, pp. 189-198, 2007. pp. 53-58, 2004. [13] L. Herkenhoff, “Professional Culture, Emotional Intelligence [24] E.H. Schein, “Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational and the Emotional Process Model”, in: The Journal of Culture”, Sloan Management Review, 25:2, p.3, 1984 Organizational Leadership & Business, Spring 2010 [25] Standish Group: Extreme CHAOS, 2001 http://www.tamut.edu/jolb/scholar/2010summer/2010herkenhoff [26] J. Stein and A. Herrmann, “The Origin of Cultural Barriers in .pdf Distributed Software Development”, DASMA Software Metrik [14] A. Herrmann, A. Hoffmann, D. Landes, R. Weißbach, Kongress, pp.143-159, 2013 “Experience-Oriented Approaches for Teaching and Training [27] M. Svahnberg, T. Gorschek, M. Eriksson, A. Borg, K. Sandahl, Requirements Engineering: An Experience Report. Proceedings J. Borster, and A. Loconsole, “Per- spectives on requirements of the 20th Interational Working Conference, REFSQ 2014, understandability – for whom does the teacher’s bell toll?,” in Essen, Germany, April 7-10, 2014, Camille Salinesi, Inge van de Requirements Engineering Education and Training, 2008. REET Weerd (eds.), Springer, Lectures Notes of Computer Science ’08., pp. 22–29, Sept 2008. LNCS 8396, pp. 254-267 [28] A. Von Stettn, D. Beimborn, and T. Weitzel, „Analyzing and [15] A. Hoffmann, “Reim—an improvisation workshop format to Managing the Impact of Cultural Behaviour Patterns on Social train soft skill awareness”, in Cooperative and Human Aspects Capital in Multinational IT Project Teams – A Case Study of Software Engineering (CHASE), 2012 5th International Approch“, in Business Information Systems Engineering, 2012, Workshop on, pp. 56–62, IEEE, 2012. original: “Auswirkungen kulturspezifischer Verhaltensmuster [16] G. Hofstede, “Culture’s Consequences: International Differences auf das Sozialkapital in multinationalen IT-Projektteams”, in in Work Related Values”, Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Wirtschaftsinformatik 54 (2012), No 3, pp. 135-151, 2012 Publications, 1980. [29] R. Weißbach, “Bridging the Communication Gap in Information [17] G. Hofstede, “Culture”, http://geerthofstede.nl/culture.aspx, System Projects: Enabling Non-IT Professionals for the accessed 13 May 2014 Requirements Engineering Process”, Applied Research in [18] G. Hofstede, Values Survey Module 2013 Questionnaire, Professional Education. Proceedings from the first CARPE http://www.geerthofstede.com/media/2124/VSM%202013%20E networking conference in Utrecht on 2-4 November 2011, J. nglish.doc, accessed May, 28th, 2014 Kettunen, Juha et al., Eds. , Turku: Turku UAS 2012, p259ff. (julkaisut.turkuamk.fi/isbn9789522162519.pdf)