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.

Software process improvement (SPI) is critical to information system development. In the context of successful SPI, this research focuses on a firm's dynamic learning ability to see how it facilitates an effective means of acquiring and utilizing external SPI knowledge in responding to changing software development environments. Specifically, the authors propose a research model to investigate how two mechanisms of absorptive capacity are incorporated with innovation culture as a contextual factor to enable successful software process improvement. A survey was conducted including 125 SPI certified firms in China and Taiwan to examine the model. The findings indicate that a firm's potential absorptive capacity significantly influences realized absorptive capacity, which has a significant impact on SPI success and acts as a partial mediator between potential absorptive capacity and SPI success. Moreover, the results suggest that the mediating effect of potential absorptive capacity on SPI success via realized absorptive capacity is amplified when innovation culture is imposed.