The impact of knowledge inertia on process tailoring in the dynamic development of software projects in Chinese industries

Context: This paper stresses the importance of continual planning in the dynamic development of software projects and highlights a decisional situation: should teams follow process standards and past experiences for safety, or should they take different learning paths and innovate the development despite the risk of experimenting with new process solutions. Objective: To address this situation, we emphasize software process tailoring (SPT), a team-based planning practice in software projects, and utilize knowledge inertia theory to investigate how experience and learning inertia influence the efficiency and effectiveness of conducting SPT given autonomous and knowledge-diverse team environments. Method: This study employed a split questionnaire design to collect samples. A total of 88 Chinese software teams from 45 firms with software development functions in various industries participated in the research. In particular, a software team delegated at least two team members who have SPT experience to participate in the survey. The partial least squares (PLS) approach was adopted to analyze the data. Results: Software teams are found to conveniently adopt and accommodate previous similar process solutions when familiar learning routes are formed (learning inertia), leading teams to make efficient but ineffective tailoring decisions. Experience inertia is found to facilitate effective process redesign. Surprisingly, autonomous software teams tend to follow familiar ways when tailoring development. Knowledge diversity diminishes the effect of learning inertia on SPT effectiveness, reflecting that knowledge-diverse teams rely less on past learning routes and can develop more creative tailoring solutions. Conclusion: Experience and learning inertia have distinct effects on SPT performance. Team autonomy and knowledge diversity contextually affect teams’ tailoring experience and learning routines, which subsequently determine SPT outcomes.