Software cultures

Like any other social activity, the work of designing and developing software is situated in the sense of taking place in specific locations and being performed by people who act from their specific context of knowledge, tools, tasks, colleagues, (organizational) memory, and history. At the same time, much of this work is done by multiple, often distributed, groups, each with their own standards and practices. There also may be much geographical as well as cultural space between those groups. Although they may not be connected in ways that help create a shared understanding, they manage to develop a reasonably coherent and stable product - which will probably be used in many different places. Some of the practices that make the accommodation of multiple places and views within a software development team possible are explored, as well as the limitations of some of these practices.