Accelerance Blog Bridging Cultural Gaps for Effective Collaboration in Software Outsourcing

One of the richest and most rewarding parts of my job at Accelerance is the opportunity I get every day to talk to and collaborate with people from different countries and cultures worldwide.Software development outsourcing is a 40-year-old industry that has grown up in the era of globalization. So you’d think we’d be adept at understanding and accommodating the cultural differences between individuals and teams working together across time zones and languages.The great tools and platforms now available to us mean that it's never been easier to write great software than it is today. But it is still hard. It’s technically hard. But mainly, it’s hard to get people on the same page, a cohesive team working towards the same shared goals.In the 17 years I’ve been working with offshore outsourcing teams I’ve seen some great successes, but some disasters too. The projects that fail rarely do so because of technology. They go south when relationships are dysfunctional when partners and their customers are not aligned, and when cultural differences aren’t adequately taken into account.