Factors Affecting Audio and Text-Based Communication Media Choice in Global Software Development Projects

Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.