Cultural Differences in Temporal Perceptions and its Application to Running Efficient Global Software Teams Richard Egan New Jersey Inst. of Tech. egan@njit.edu Marilyn Tremaine New Jersey Inst. of Tech. tremaine@njit.edu Jerry Fjermestad New Jersey Inst. of Tech. fjermestad@njit.edu Allen Milewski Monmouth University amilewsk@monmouth.edu Patrick O’Sullivan IBM Corporation patosullivan@ie.ibm.com Abstract Global software development has been found to be a difficult undertaking, in particular, when members of a single team are not co-located. Studies have looked at the impact of different cultural backgrounds, communication structures and temporal distance on the team's effectiveness. This research proposes to examine the impact of culturally based perceptions of time. A gap analysis is proposed to carry out this examination. The gap that will be measured is the gap between time-based attitudes and behavior in team unit A and team unit B where units A and B are part of the same team but are not co-located. These time-based attitudes and behavior will be compared to measures of team satisfaction and team effectiveness. A model of the impact of the temporal cultural differences and their effect on team performance is presented and the proposed research for testing this model is described. 1. Introduction Global software development is a common business practice today. Companies develop software in multiple areas of the world to be competitive in the global economy by taking advantage of lowered employee costs and by being closer to markets they wish to expand. Unfortunately, there continue to be reports of problems with the globalization of software development. Herbsleb [1] suggests that global software development requires close cooperation of people with different cultural backgrounds, something that is difficult to obtain. He indicates that conflicts arise because cultures differ on such critical things as the need for structure, observance of hierarchy, time perceptions and communication practices. Globally dispersed, virtual teams are additionally affected by time zone differences, often referred to as “temporal distances.” Carmel and Agarwal [2] notes that work within a time-zone band facilitates synchronous communication but work across time-zone bands causes communication problems. Other researchers have reported evidence of software project problems arising when cultures differ on such things as the need for structure, observance of hierarchy, time perceptions and communication practices [3-6]. Most of these reports are anecdotal and come from broad-based observations of software teams in action. Given the rise in global software teams and the importance that they perform as well as they can, there is a need for a more in-depth examination of the factors that determine team success. The research described in this paper focuses on one cultural difference, temporal perceptions, and the effect this difference might have on the performance and satisfaction of software teams that are distributed across temporal distances. As such, this work needs to separate out the effects of cultural time perception from the effects of other variables such as time zone differences and general cultural differences. One method for uncovering differences in cultural perceptions is “gap” analysis [7]. A gap analysis will assess the differences between how team members in one culture perceive and evaluate their time attitudes and behavior and how team members in a second culture perceive and evaluate these same time attitudes and behavior. If the gaps are large, then it is expected that team communication will be less, satisfaction will be lower and work will be less effective. Gaps between dispersed teams will be measured through the distribution of a questionnaire to approximately 100 employees working on software