A framework for identifying cultural influences on requirements engineering activities

Requirements Engineering (RE) activities require intensive communication to ensure an accurate elicitation and documentation of clients' requirements. Culture influences the way in which individuals communicate; therefore, RE activities could be strongly influenced by individuals' cultures. This paper presents a framework for examining and mapping between cultural influences and RE activities. To construct the framework, we adopted Hofstede's model and conducted 41 interviews with RE practitioners from different domains and across two cultures, complemented by 30 follow-up interviews to consolidate the collected data. The framework demonstrates mapping between the cultural index values (as per Hofstede's model) and the identified cultural influences on RE activities. The framework is intended to help RE practitioners determine the cultural influences they may encounter, and to overcome potential cultural issues by applying mitigation strategies. The evolution of the framework showed significant statistical results.