45 research outputs found
Disrupting the Disruptors or Enhancing Them? How Blockchain Re-Shapes Two-Sided Platforms
No full textThe importance of platform-based businesses in the modern economy is growing continuously and becoming increasingly relevant. Specifically, the deployment of digital technologies has enhanced the applicability of two-sided business models, enabling companies to act not just as builders and owners of assets, but as orchestrators of external resources. Management research has therefore focused increasingly on the unique aspects of this model. At the center of a two-sided platform there is a platform provider that enables a transaction between the sides, reducing the relative transaction costs. However, in recent years, a new technology emerged that challenges some of the underlying assumptions of this model: the blockchain. Blockchain enables the creation of a peer-to-peer network that is able to authenticate transactions, upon which applications and services may be built. It allows users to conduct transactions without the need for a central platform. We explore how blockchain technology re-shapes two-sided platforms, focusing in particular on the role of the platform provider. The research is based upon multiple case studies, using an inductive approach to explore this emerging phenomenon. Our findings show there is a significant shift in the role of the central player that links the two sides of a transaction using blockchain. We frame this as a shift from a "platform provider" to a "service provider", leveraging the blockchain as a Platform-as-a-Service. Our work examines the peculiarities of this model, unveiling new dynamics in these businesses. Specifically, we show that different variables must be considered to classify two-sided platforms using blockchain. Furthermore, the essential characteristics of two-sided platforms must also be enlarged. For example, traditional platform theories emphasize the importance of cross-side network externalities in creating value. In blockchain-enabled platforms however, we show the use of “tokens” play a key role in creating different types of externalities between the two sides
Critical Decisions in Software Development: Updating the State of the Practice
No full textThis article focuses on how to choose the "right" software development process, how to structure global software design chains, how to manage the interaction of project structure and software design, and how to balance innovation and efficiency in a software business.IEEE Computer Societ
System design and the cost of architectural complexity
No full textThesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-166).Many modern systems are so large that no one truly understands how they work. It is well known in the engineering community that architectural patterns (including hierarchies, modules, and abstraction layers) should be used in design because they play an important role in controlling complexity. These patterns make a system easier to evolve and keep its separate portions within the bounds of human understanding so that distributed teams can operate independently while jointly fashioning a coherent whole. This study set out to measure the link between architectural complexity (the complexity that arises within a system due to a lack or breakdown of hierarchy or modularity) and a variety of costs incurred by a development organization. A study was conducted within a successful software firm. Measures of architectural complexity were taken from eight versions of their product using techniques recently developed by MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak. Significant cost drivers including defect density, developer productivity, and staff turnover were measured as well. The link between cost and complexity was explored using a variety of statistical techniques. Within this research setting, we found that differences in architectural complexity could account for 50% drops in productivity, three-fold increases in defect density, and order-of-magnitude increases in staff turnover. Using the techniques developed in this thesis, it should be possible for firms to estimate the financial cost of their complexity by assigning a monetary value to the decreased productivity, increased defect density, and increased turnover it causes. As a result, it should be possible for firms to more accurately estimate the potential dollar-value of refactoring efforts aimed at improving architecture.by Daniel J. Sturtevant.Ph.D
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
No full textA 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. This dynamic occurs because the organization's governance structures, problem solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space in which it searches for new solutions. Such a relationship is important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of product performance, product variety, process flexibility and even the path of industry evolution. 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. At one extreme are commercial software firms, in which the organizational participants are tightly-coupled, with respect to their goals, structure and behavior. At the other, are open source software communities, in which the participants are much more loosely-coupled by comparison. The mirroring hypothesis predicts that these different organizational forms will produce products with distinctly different architectures. Specifically, loosely-coupled organizations will develop more modular designs than tightly-coupled organizations. We test this hypothesis, using a sample of matched-pair products. 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. We measure modularity by capturing the level of coupling between a product's components. The magnitude of the differences is substantial - up to a factor of eight, in terms of the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others. Our results have significant managerial implications, in highlighting the impact of organizational design decisions on the technical structure of the artifacts that these organizations subsequently develop.Organizational Design, Product Design, Architecture, Modularity, Open-Source Software.
The Alignment of Partnering Strategy, Governance and Management in R&D Projects: The Role of Contract Choice
No full textFirms increasingly look outside their organizational boundaries to identify partners that can improve the effectiveness of R&D projects. The strategy for using partners, however, varies significantly across projects. In some, partners are used primarily to lower development costs and/or supplement development capacity; in others they are used to improve the quality of the final product. How should these variations in partnering strategy impact the governance and management choices made within projects? We examine this question, using data on 172 R&D projects from six different industries. We test hypotheses that examine first, how a firm’s choice of contract—whether fixed price, time & materials, or performance-based—is shaped by its partnering strategy; and second, how this choice subsequently affects the levels of partner integration and partner performance observed in a project. Our results indicate that the choice of contract is a function of a firm’s partnering strategy, more flexible contracts being preferred in projects that seek long-run capability-based benefits, and where partnering relationships are broader in scope. These choices, in turn, impact the benefits associated with partner integration. In particular, higher levels of partner integration are always associated with higher project costs, but are associated with higher product quality only in projects using more flexible contract types. Furthermore, major deviations from the “optimal” choice of contract increase the costs and decrease the benefits associated with partner integration. We end by discussing the implications of our findings, and suggest new directions for future research
impact of software architecture on product maintenance efforts and measurement of economic benefits of product redesign
No full textThesis (S.M. in System Design and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-71).This paper reports results of an empirical study that aimed to demonstrate the link between software product design structure and engineers' effort to perform a code modification in the context of a corrective maintenance task. First, this paper reviews the current state of the art in engineering economics of the maintenance phase of software lifecycle. Secondly, a measure of software product complexity suitable to assess maintainability of a software system is developed. This measure is used to analyze the design structure change that happened between two versions of a mature software product. The product selected for this study underwent a significant re-design between two studied versions. Thirdly, an experiment is designed to measure the effort engineers spend designing a code modification associated with a corrective change request. These effort measurements are used to demonstrate the effect of product design complexity on engineers' productivity. It is asserted in the paper that engineer's productivity improvements have a significant economic value and can be used to justify investments into re-design of an existing software product.by Andrei Akaikine.S.M.in System Design and Managemen
Investigating the sources of defects in distributed open source software systems
No full textThesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-67).In major software systems that are developed by competent software engineers, the existence of defects in production is unlikely to be an acceptable situation. And yet, we find that in several such systems, defects remain a reality. Furthermore, the number of changes that are fixed only to then be reopened is noticeable. The implications of having defects in a system can be frustrating for all stakeholders, and when they require constant rework, they can lead to the problematic code-test-code-test mode of development. For management, such conditions can result in slipped schedules and an increase in development costs and for upper management and users, they can result in losing confidence in the product. This study looks at the drivers of defects in the mature open-source project GNOME and explores the relationship between the various drivers of these defects and software quality. Using defect-activity and source-code data for 32 systems over a period of eight years, the work presents a multiple regression model capable of explaining 16.2% of defects and a logistic regression model capable of explaining between 13.6% and 18.1% of reopened defects. The study also shows that although defects in general and reopened defects appear to move together, defects in general correlate with a measure of complexity that captures how components connect to each other whereas reopened defects correlate with a measure that captures the inner complexities of components, thereby suggesting that different types of defects are correlated with different forms of complexity.by Ali Almossawi.S.M.in Engineering and Managemen
MHD mode conversion of fast and slow magnetoacoustic waves in the solar corona
No full textThere are three main wave types present in the Sun’s atmosphere: Alfvén waves and fast and slow magnetoacoustic waves. Alfvén waves are purely magnetic and would not exist if it was not for the Sun’s magnetic field. The fast and slow magnetoacoustic waves are so named due to their relative phase speeds. As the magnetic field tends to zero, the slow wave goes to zero as the fast wave becomes the sound wave. When a resonance occurs energy may be transferred between the different modes, causing one to increase in amplitude whilst the other decreases. This is known as mode conversion. Mode conversion of fast and slow magnetoacoustic waves takes place when the characteristic wave speeds, the sound and Alfvén speeds, are equal. This occurs in regions where the ratio of the gas pressure to the magnetic pressure, known as the plasma β, is approximately unity.
In this thesis we investigate the conversion of fast and slow magnetoacoustic waves as they propagate from low- to high-β plasma. This investigation uses a combination of analytical and numerical techniques to gain a full understanding of the process. The MacCormack finite-difference method is used to model a wave as it undergoes mode conversion. Complementing this analytical techniques are employed to find the wave behaviour at, and distant from, the mode-conversion region. These methods are described in Chapter 2.
The simple, one-dimensional model of an isothermal atmosphere permeated by a uniform magnetic field is studied in Chapter 3. Gravitational acceleration is included to ensure that mode conversion takes place. Driving a slow magnetoacoustic wave on the upper boundary conversion takes place as the wave passes from low- to high-β plasma. This is expanded upon in Chapter 4 where the effects of a non-isothermal temperature profile are examined. A tanh profile is selected to mimic the steep temperature gradient found in the transition region. In Chapter 5 the complexity is increased by allowing for a two-dimensional model. For this purpose we choose a radially-expanding magnetic field which is representative of a coronal hole. In this instance the slow magnetoacoustic wave is driven upwards from the surface, again travelling from low to high β. Finally, in Chapter 6 we investigate mode conversion near a two-dimensional, magnetic null point. At the null the plasma β becomes infinitely large and a wave propagating towards the null point will experience mode conversion.
The methods used allow conversion of fast and slow waves to be described in the various model atmospheres. The amount of transmission and conversion are calculated and matched across the mode-conversion layer giving a full description of the wave behaviour
Multivariate Unsupervised Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection in Enterprise Applications
No full textExisting application performance management (APM) solutions lack robust anomaly detection capabilities and root cause analysis techniques, that do not require manual efforts and domain knowledge. In this paper, we develop a density-based unsupervised machine learning model to detect anomalies within an enterprise application, based upon data from multiple APM systems. The research was conducted in collaboration with a European automotive company, using two months of live application data. We show that our model detects abnormal system behavior more reliably than a commonly used outlier detection technique and provides information for detecting root causes
