Changes in emergent software development routines: The moderation effects of routine diversity

•Routine changes reduce project popularity in open-source software development projects.•Routine diversity provides a coping mechanism for developers to adapt to changing routines in fluid organizational forms.•Sequence-mining digital trace data from project repositories quantifies routine change and routine diversity.•Core developers and managers should monitor changes in development routines while maintaining the diversity of routines. Research into the role of routine change has been conducted in relatively stable and structured organizational settings. This study extends the current understanding of routine change to more fluid organizational forms. Drawing on the literature in organizational routines and routine change, we develop and test a model that captures the dynamic relationships among routine change, routine diversity, and project performance in the context of open-source software development. By sequence-mining the digital trace data of OSS projects, we show that routine change reduces project popularity; however, this effect is mitigated as routine diversity increases. Thus, routine diversity provides a coping mechanism for participants to adapt to changing routines. This study reveals the dynamics in open-source development routines and their effects on project popularity, which can apply to various other fluid organizational forms.