The Effects of Learning from Failure and Team Cognitive Factors on Software Process Tailoring
Chung‐Yang Chen, Jung-Chieh Lee · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · 2025
Software project teams often plan and replan their development processes to accommodate a project’s particularities and volatility. This continual planning is called software process tailoring (SPT). In SPT, software teams often experiment with innovative process solutions to address changes. Because mistakes are inevitable in development and innovation, learning from failure is critical for team members to acknowledge, reflect on, and rectify process mistakes. This article focuses on failure-based learning behavior (FLB) in SPT and explores how a team’s FLB can be facilitated to foster SPT performance. Based on social cognitive theory, three team cognitive factors, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and identification, are examined. The research also explores the moderating role of servant leadership in the effects of these factors on FLB. We used a survey research method and collected data from 65 software teams to test the model. The results show that a team’s FLB significantly fosters SPT performance. Higher team self-efficacy and team identification increase team FLB, whereas higher team self-esteem decreases FLB. Servant leadership significantly moderates the effects of team self-esteem and identification on FLB, but this leadership does not have a significant effect on the relationship between team self-efficacy and FLB.