Relevance for Software Engineering

Since many software development companies are international firms, it is important that software engineers be aware of different cultures in general and of different cultures of software development in particular. A general discussion about cultural differences is beyond the scope of this book. Thus, this chapter focuses on two countries ”India and Israel ”that are unique in some sense with respect to the software market. Specifically, we describe cultural factors that may explain the success of the high-tech industry in these countries. Our aim is to highlight the fact that software development may be influenced by local and cultural characteristics. We believe that the more software engineers are aware of such topics and consider them when they cooperate with people from other countries and/or cultures, the more fruitful their software development processes become.

A topic closely related to multiple cultures in the information technology professions is gender and minorities. As it turns out, in many countries women are underrepresented in the high-tech field. Since a lot of research has been conducted so far with respect to this topic, in this chapter we present the main findings of the research and present reasons that may explain this situation. The relevance of this topic to software engineering is as follows : because the software engineering area is still evolving, the people who participate in its development may have a significant influence on its future. If our intention is to expand the population who uses software products, it is reasonable to assume that the more diverse the developer population becomes, the bigger the population that software products fit will become.

In this chapter, we do not merely focus on software engineering, but examine the topic from the wider perspective of the Information Technology (IT) market, and sometimes even from the perspective of the entire high-tech industry. It is clear, however, that the impact of the topics discussed in this chapter with respect to the IT and high-tech fields have direct implications on software engineering processes.