  Drivers for globalization are significant where today's organizations look
for cheaper and faster ways to develop software as well as ways to satisfy
quality and investment requirements imposed by customers, shareholders, and
governments. Given these needs, Global Software Development (GSD) has become a
"normal" way of doing business. Working in GSD often require teams of different
cultures to work together. A poor understanding of cultural differences can
create barriers to trust or missed opportunities. The literature on culture in
GSD is either outdated or disparate, requiring practitioners to read many
papers to get an overview of how to manage multi-cultural teams. In this study,
we aim to highlight how to increase cultural awareness within teams, avoid
potential conflict and harness differences for improved team spirit. To answer
our research question, "How should cultural differences be managed, identified
and communicated to a GSD team?", we conducted a systematic literature review
of the GSD literature. A synthesis of solutions found in nineteen studies
provided 12 distinct practices that organizations can implement, to include,
"provide a cultural knowledge base", "understand and make team members aware of
cultural differences" and "plan responses to mitigate occurrences of cultural
misunderstandings". These implementable cultural practices go some way to
providing solutions to managing multi-cultural development teams, and thus to
support one of the problem dimensions in GSD and embrace cultural differences.
