Manuel E. Sosa

Identifying modular and integrative systems and their impact on design team interactions

The typical approach to developing complex products is to decompose the product into systems, and these into components. We introduce a new notion of system modularity based upon the way components share design interfaces across systems. Modular systems are those whose design interfaces with other systems are clustered among physically adjacent systems, whereas integrative systems are those whose interfaces are physically distributed or functionally integrative across all or most other systems. Our research method allows us to study how system modularity impacts design team interactions. Our approach is illustrated by analyzing the development of an aircraft engine.

Factors that influence technical communication in distributed product development: an empirical study in the telecommunications industry

Understanding the communication process in product development organizations has been recognized as a key element to improve product development performance. It is particularly interesting to study information exchanges in geographically distributed product development teams because of the highly interdependent nature of design organizations. Additionally, the use of electronic-based communication media has changed how development teams communicate. By studying the way product development teams use various communication media (face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail), the authors assess how the process of exchanging technical information is influenced by factors such as geographic dispersion, organizational bonds, and degree of team interdependence. They present a model that allows us to formulate several hypotheses about how these factors influence both communication frequency and media choice. They use empirical evidence from the telecommunications industry to test their hypotheses. They confirm previous results about the obstructive influence of distance on technical communication. However, they found that such negative effects may be mitigated by other factors such as the recognizing of highly interdependent team members, the existence of strong organizational bonds and the use of electronic communication media.

Where Do Creative Interactions Come From? The Role of Tie Content and Social Networks

Understanding the determinants of creativity at the individual and organizational level has been the focus of a long history of research in various disciplines from the social sciences, but little attention has been devoted to studying creativity at the dyadic level. Why are some dyadic interactions more likely than others to trigger the generation of novel and useful ideas in organizations? As dyads conduit both knowledge and social forces, they offer an ideal setting to disentangle the effects of knowledge diversity, tie strength, and network structure on the generation of creative thoughts. This paper not only challenges the current belief that sporadic and distant dyadic relationships (weak ties) foster individual creativity but also argues that diverse and strong ties facilitate the generation of creative ideas. From a knowledge viewpoint, our results suggest that ties that transmit a wide (rather than narrow) set of knowledge domains (within the same tie) favor creative idea generation if exchanges occur with sufficient frequency. From a social perspective, we find that strong ties serve as effective catalysts for the generation of creative ideas when they link actors who are intrinsically motivated to work closely together. Finally, this paper also shows that dyadic network cohesion (i.e., the connections from the focal dyad to common contacts) does not always hinder the generation of creative ideas. Our empirical evidence suggests that when cohesion exceeds its average levels, it becomes detrimental to creative idea generation. Hypotheses are tested in a sociometric study conducted within the development department of a software firm.

A Network Approach to Define Modularity of Components in Complex Products

Modularity has been defined at the product and system levels. However, little effort has gone into defining and quantifying modularity at the component level. We consider complex products as a network of components that share technical interfaces (or connections) in order to function as a whole and define component modularity based on the lack of connectivity among them. Building upon previous work in graph theory and social network analysis, we define three measures of component modularity based on the notion of centrality. Our measures consider how components share direct interfaces with adjacent components, how design interfaces may propagate to nonadjacent components in the product, and how components may act as bridges among other components through their interfaces. We calculate and interpret all three measures of component modularity by studying the product architecture of a large commercial aircraft engine. We illustrate the use of these measures to test the impact of modularity on component redesign. Our results show that the relationship between component modularity and component redesign depends on the type of interfaces connecting product components. We also discuss directions for future work. DOI: 10.1115/1.2771182

Linking Cyclicality and Product Quality

This paper examines the impact of architectural decisions on the level of defects in a product. We view products as collections of components linked together to work as an integrated whole. Previous work has established modularity how decoupled a component is from other product components as a critical determinant of defects, and we confirm its importance. Yet our study also provides empirical evidence for a relationship between product quality and cyclicality the extent to which a component depends on itself via other product components. We find cyclicality to be a determinant of quality that is distinct from, and no less important than, modularity. Extending this main result, we show how the cyclicality--quality relationship is affected by the centrality of a component in a cycle and the distribution of a cycle across product modules. These findings, which are based on an analysis of open source software development projects, have implications for the study and design of complex systems.

Degree Distribution and Quality in Complex Engineered Systems

Complex engineered systems tend to have architectures in which a small subset of components exhibits a disproportional number of linkages. Such components are known as hubs. This paper examines the degree distribution of systems to identify the presence of hubs and quantify the fraction of hub components. We examine how the presence and fraction of hubs relate to a system’s quality. We provide empirical evidence that the presence of hubs in a system’s architecture is associated with a low number of defects. Furthermore, we show that complex engineered systems may have an optimal fraction of hub components with respect to system quality. Our results suggest that architects and managers aiming to improve the quality of complex system designs must proactively identify and manage the use of hubs. Our paper provides a data-driven approach for identifying appropriate target levels of hub usage.

A NETWORK APPROACH TO DEFINE MODULARITY OF PRODUCT COMPONENTS

We consider complex products as a network of components that share technical interfaces in order to function as a whole. Building upon previous work in graph theory and social network analysis, we define three measures of component modularity that consider how components may share direct interfaces with other adjacent components, how design interfaces may propagate to all other components in the product, and how components may act as “bridges” between other components. We calculate and interpret all three measures of component modularity by studying the actual product architecture of a large commercial aircraft engine. We illustrate how to use these measures to test their impact on component redesign. Directions for future work are discussed.Copyright

Studying the Dynamics of the Architecture of Software Products

This paper reports on an exploratory study of how the architecture of a software product evolves over time. Because software is embedded in many of today’s complex products, and it is prone to relatively rapid change, it is instructive to study software architecture evolution for general insights into product design. We use metrics to capture the intrinsic complexity of software architectures as they evolve through successive generations (version releases). We introduce a set of product representations and metrics that take into account two important features used to manage the complexity in software products: layers and modules. We also capture organizational data associated with the product under development. We propose a three-step approach for the analysis and illustrate it using successive versions of an open source product, Ant. One of our findings is that software architectures seem to evolve in a non-linear manner similar to the S-shaped curve that characterizes technology evolution at the industry level. We also find several parallel patterns among architectural and organizational dynamics. Implications for research and practice are discussed.Copyright

Can Informal Communication Networks Disrupt Coordination in New Product Development Projects

This paper investigates how the structure of the informal communication network that results from efforts to coordinate task interdependence between design teams in complex product development projects moderates the effect of task interdependence on interteam communication. Drawing on theoretical mechanisms from the social network and knowledge transfer literature, as well as on recent empirical advances in exponential random graphs models of social networks, we examine how the presence of a common third party in the communication network affects the likelihood of technical communication between interdependent teams designing the components of a large commercial aircraft engine. Although task interdependence has a strong and significant effect on the likelihood of communication between teams, this effect is moderated by the presence of common third parties. The nature of this moderation depends on the position of the common third party within the triadic communication structure. When the common third party seats in the middle of a communication chain between the potential source and the potential recipient of technical communication, its presence increases the likelihood of communication between these two teams. However, when the communication between the source and recipient can trigger cyclic exchanges between the three teams, the presence of the third party reduces the likelihood of communication between the two interdependent teams, increasing the risk of coordination disruptions. We discuss the implications of our findings on the literature of intraorganizational networks in new product development.

Assembling Creative Teams in New Product Development Using Creative Team Familiarity

Creativity is strongly influenced by the way individuals are organized. One of the most difficult and important challenges when managing innovation is to identify the individuals within an organization who must work closely with each other to maximize the generation of creative ideas. This paper aims to inform managers of new product development (NPD)organizations about forming creative teams. To do so, we extend the notion of team familiarity (i.e., the extent to which team members have worked together before becoming members of a team) by considering the quality of past interactions. We define creative team familiarity as the degree to which team members have triggered the generation of creative ideas in one another during task-related interactions prior to joining the team. This paper argues that a high level of creative team familiarity (rather than simply a high level of team familiarity) is positively associated with a team’s capability to produce innovative outcomes. We test this hypothesis in a unique empirical setting involving participants in an international executive MBA program. We also illustrate the implications of our findings by identifying members in a real NPD organization who would form a creative task force with maximum level of creative team familiarity.Creativity is strongly influenced by the way individuals are organized. One of the most difficult and important challenges when managing innovation is to identify the individuals within an organization who must work closely with each other in order to maximize the generation of creative ideas. This paper introduces a structured approach to guide managers of new product development organizations on their decisions to form a temporary team (or task force) from which creative solutions would be demanded. Our approach exploits the notion of creative interactions, which recognizes that people trigger the generation of creative ideas when interacting with each other for task-related matters. Our approach is structured in three basic steps: (1) capturing the current organizational structure; (2) measuring creative dyadic interactions; and (3) forming clusters of creatives. The intent of our approach is to identify groups of individuals within the organization who have a history of triggering the generation of creative ideas when interacting with each other. The basic premise underlying this approach is that the occurrence of past creative interactions predicts the occurrence of creative interactions in future design efforts. We design an experiment to test this hypothesis with participants in an Executive MBA program. We then illustrate our approach by implementing it in the new product development department of a European software firm, and we discuss the organizational implications of implementing this approach.