Thursday 10 December 2009

Development Teams across cultural boundaries

I have been part of many development teams from all over the world. As I migrated from team to team, I see the good mix of experiences and background that each team member contributes to the team. Apart from contribute to the team in technical manner, they also contribute to the team from a personal perspective. The current team that I am working on has 10 different nationalities. As I am being expose to people from different cultural backgrounds, my personal growth advanced a bit more.

Lets hold that thought for a moment and think if a team will work better or worse if each of the team member is from a similar cultural background. I mean, would the team stand a higher chance of delivering the project successfully? would the team deliver a project on time?

I really don't have a clear answer for this. From my observations and from events from the world at large, the evidence points to a NO answer.

Imagine a development team where the team members have been together for more than 25 years, speaks the same dialect of the language and graduated from the same University. Would such a team work?