Psychological Safety in Agile Software Development Teams: Work Design Antecedents and Performance Consequences
This addresses the problem of enhancing team performance in agile software development by identifying psychological safety as a key factor, though it is incremental as it builds on existing theories with new empirical data.
The study investigated how work design characteristics (autonomy, task interdependence, role clarity) affect psychological safety in agile software development teams and its impact on team performance, finding that autonomy boosts psychological safety, which positively influences team reflexivity and directly improves performance.
Psychological safety has been postulated as a key factor for the success of agile software development teams, yet there is a lack of empirical studies investigating the role of psychological safety in this context. The present study examines how work design characteristics of software development teams (autonomy, task interdependence, and role clarity) influence psychological safety and, further, how psychological safety impacts team performance, either directly or indirectly through team reflexivity. We test our model using survey data from 236 team members in 43 software development teams in Norway. Our results show that autonomy boosts psychological safety in software teams, and that psychological safety again has a positive effect on team reflexivity and a direct effect on team performance.