Culture and Testing: What is the Relationship?

This paper presents the results of a four-month ethnographically-informed study that we performed at a vendor organization in India to understand how culture influences global software-testing practice. The paper discusses our findings and analysis of software-testing activities conducted by two teams: one working for a Japanese client, the other working for a U.S. client. The findings show the differences in the software-testing approaches of the two teams with respect to team structure, thought processes, expectations, testing focus areas, and trust levels. The analysis suggests that cultural differences (e.g., national, user, and software-developer) are responsible for these differences in testing approaches. The paper describes the study details, our observations about the different testing-approach patterns that the teams adopted, our analysis of the reasons for those differences, and our reflections and suggested implications based on the findings.