If You Can't Say Something Nice: Factors Contributing to Team Member Silence in Distributed Software Project Teams.

Managing software projects is complex. Increasingly, organizations are using different methods and forms of teams to ensure software projects are developed on time, on budget, and meet functionality requirements. One factor that can affect the success of a software development team is the willingness of team members to be fully engaged and to share concerns throughout the effort. Employee silence is the unwillingness of an individual to express concerns. This exploratory research study examines three factors that influence a team member's choice to remain silent when participating in a distributed software project: the individual's level of experience, the role of the offending team member, and the individual's personal responsibility to report. Using a scenario-based experiment, this study finds that some of the factors that are assumed in other contexts of employee silence may not be related in the context of distributed teams in which there is a need to voice concerns among peers.