TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - MacCormack, Alan
A1  - Lagerstrom, Robert
A1  - Mocker, Martin
A1  - Baldwin, Carliss
T1  - Designing an agile software portfolio architecture: the impact of coupling on performance
JF  - Working papers / Harvard Business School, Division of Research
N2  - The modern industrial corporation encompasses a myriad of different software applications, each of which must work in concert to deliver functionality to end-users. However, the increasingly complex and dynamic nature of competition in today’s product-markets dictates that this software portfolio be continually evolved and adapted, in order to meet new business challenges. This ability – to rapidly update, improve, remove, replace, and reimagine the software applications that underpin a firm’s competitive position – is at the heart of what has been called IT agility. Unfortunately, little work has examined the antecedents of IT agility, with respect to the choices a firm makes when designing its “Software Portfolio Architecture.”
We address this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between software portfolio architecture and IT agility at the level of the individual applications in the architecture. In particular, we draw from modular systems theory to develop a series of hypotheses about how different types of coupling impact the ability to update, remove or replace the software applications in a firm’s portfolio. We test our hypotheses using longitudinal data from a large financial services firm, comprising over 1,000 applications and over 3,000 dependencies between them. Our methods allow us to disentangle the effects of different types and levels of coupling. 
Our analysis reveals that applications with higher levels of coupling cost more to update, are harder to remove, and are harder to replace, than those with lower coupling. The measures of coupling that best explain differences in IT agility include all indirect dependencies between software applications (i.e., they include coupling and dependency relationships that are not easily visible to the system architect). Our results reveal the critical importance of software portfolio design decisions, in developing a portfolio of applications that can evolve and adapt over time.
KW  - information systems
KW  - software
KW  - architecture
KW  - modularity
KW  - agility
KW  - coupling
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-14058
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-14058
UR  - http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52707
SN  - 0749-4610
SS  - 0749-4610
VL  - 17
IS  - 105
SP  - 1
EP  - 40
S1  - 40
PB  - Harvard Business School
CY  - Boston, Mass.
ER  -