European Project Management Journal, Volume 12, Issue 2, December 2022 24 Corresponding author. Email: vathsala@uom.lk ISSN 2560-4961 (online) Copyright © 2022, The Authors. Published by IPMA Serbia. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc/4.0/) https://doi.org/10.56889/neqw6601 Original article TEAM MEMBER VOLUNTARY TURNOVER, INTRODUCTION OF NEW MEMBERS AND PROJECT PERFORMANCE Vathsala Wickramasinghe, Harshamala Pathirana Department of Management of Technology, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka Received: 10 October 2022 Revised: 16 November 2022 Accepted: 21 November 2022 Abstract: The study investigated the scenario of voluntary employee turnover in the halfway through project work and the introduction of new members to preplace those who had left. The respondents of the study were team members who remained in respective projects for the entire duration in Sri Lanka. The study context is such that employees were requested to lodge their intentions to resign at least one- month prior to the actual date of resignation. It was found that the contribution of leaving team members until the actual date of resignation is limited and it had significant effect on project performance; remaining team members’ ability to manage information transfer in view of leaving members and the contribution of new members who were hired in place of resigned members also had significant effects on project performance. Keywords: projects, teams, team member change, voluntary employee turnover. 1. INTRODUCTION One of the key components of projects is people; projects are composed of individuals who come together from different functional areas to share their expertise to achieve project outcomes or performance. More understanding about expertise of project team members and process variables such as information transfer between team members are important when managing project teams. The context of the present study is software development projects. In software development projects, the most critical resource is knowledge, and mere presence of expertise on a team is insufficient to achieve project outcomes; expertise should be managed and coordinated to achieve its full potential. Despite the importance of people, the literature lacks explanations of how team member voluntary turnover and new team member introductions in the halfway through software development projects influence delivering project outcomes. By drawing a sample of team members from software development projects, who remained in the respective projects from the beginning to the end, the study investigated their perceptions of voluntary turnover of team members in the halfway through project work and the introduction of new members to preplace those who had left. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate 1) the contribution of leaving team members until the date of resignation, 2) remaining team members’ ability to manage information transfer in view of leaving members, 3) the contribution of new members who were hired in place of resigned members, and 4) whether all these have any effect on project performance. The study intends to make contributions to both theory and practice. First, remaining team members’ perceptions show the ability of teams to respond to changes in team composition and become flexible in its personnel, which are very much critical to quality, cost, and the delivery of results within