Alan MacCormack
Harvard Business School – Boston (USA)

Abstract:
Over the last 20 years, even the most traditional of industries have come to rely on software. Despite the increasing pervasiveness and importance of software systems however, many firms lack a fundamental understanding of how to design software. These challenges give rise to what I call the Software Complexity Catastrophe – systems that grow at an exponential rate, yet which have designs that are increasingly hard to adapt, costly to maintain and prone to critical errors.
In this seminar, I will present findings from a multi-year research project that seeks to understand the impact of design decisions on software system performance. This work uses modular systems theory as a theoretical lens to examine system design decisions, and network analysis methods to measure levels of software modularity. Among the results, I find that: i) designs differ substantially across different software systems; ii) these differences are correlated with differences in the cost to maintain and adapt software systems, and iii) design outcomes are driven as much by features of the organization, as by a system’s technical specifications. Given these results, I speculate on what firms can do to avoid a software complexity catastrophe.

Alan MacCormack is the MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.  His research examines the management of innovation in high-technology industries.  His work has been published in a variety of leading journals like Management Science and Harvard Business Review.  He has also written over 50 cases exploring how leading organizations like Intel, Microsoft and NASA manage innovation.  Alan is currently teaching FIELD, an MBA course that develops students’ leadership abilities by asking them to solve real world problems in teams.  He has a doctorate from Harvard University, and degrees from MIT and Bath University.

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Venue
Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Building B26/B – Room 0.2 – ground floor
Via Lambruschini 4/B, Milano