Exploring the Effects of Team Learning Capabilities and Team Climates in Software Process Tailoring

This article highlights the importance of software process tailoring (SPT) in engineering and managing dynamic and innovative software development. In addition, it investigates the effects of the learning capabilities of a software team and the surrounding team climates when conducting SPT. Given the highly interdependent characteristics of software development tasks and the knowledge-intensive nature of SPT, this investigation focuses on the learning capabilities of absorptive capacity (AC) and transactive memory systems (TMS) to determine how a team creates and distributes knowledge to perform SPT efficiently and effectively. Moreover, concerning the collaborative yet conflictual environment of SPT, two associated team climates are considered to examine the moderating effects: innovation and performance. In the investigation, 116 Taiwanese software project teams were surveyed. An effectual knowledge-learning and sharing process featuring TMS and AC was identified, and the mixed influences of the two team climates on the process were revealed, along with several treatments discussed in the SPT context.