Contributions

  • Rusnak, John - Contributor
  • Baldwin, Carliss Y. (Carliss Young) - Contributor
  • Harvard Business School - Contributor

Publication

2008 - Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts

Language

English

Word Count

6,750 words, Guess

Page Count

27 pages

Identifiers

Description

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are developed. We explore this relationship in the software industry. Our research takes advantage of a natural experiment, in that we observe products that fulfill the same function being developed by very different organizational forms. We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis. In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular than the product from the tightly-coupled organization.

Description

A variety of academic work asserts that a relationship exists between the structure of a development organization and the architecture of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products are often said to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations from which they come. Such a link, if confirmed empirically, would be important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of, among other things: product performance; product variety; process flexibility; and future industry evolution. We explore this relationship in the software industry by use of a technique called Design Structure Matrices (DSMs), which allows us to visualize the architectures of different software products and to calculate metrics to compare their levels of modularity.

Subjects

Series Statement

  • Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 08-039

Other Editions

  • Exploring the duality between product and Organizational ArchitecturesHarvard Business School2008

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