Iterations as the result of social and technical factors: empirical evidence from a large-scale design project

Abstract

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Modularity, Robustness, and Change Propagation: A Multifaceted Relation

“…The findings on dynamic robustness, instead, suggest that modular product architectures receive fewer iterations or changes and are robust to their propagation. This is congruent with empirical research that has shown that modularity is associated with a decrease in the number of errors, changes, and iterations (MacCormack et al, 2006;Piccolo et al, 2019;Sosa et al, 2013). With respect to a process architecture, our research suggests that modularity can add stability to a process and can help to confine iterations inside process modules, thus avoiding catastrophic cascades.…”

“…Higher modularity can promote higher changeability as an effect of the loose coupling between modules, which makes it possible to substitute or upgrade a module in isolation or with fewer local changes (Hölttä and Otto, 2005;Thomke, 1997;Ulrich, 1995;Worren et al, 2002). As changes, errors, and perturbations can remain localised without being propagated to the whole system, modularity can increase system robustness (Giffin et al, 2009;Pan and Sinha, 2007;Piccolo et al, 2019;Suh et al, 2007). Finally, the presence of loosely coupled or independent modules makes it possible to implement parallelisation (Gershenson et al, 2003;Parraguez et al, 2019;Yassine and Braha, 2003).…”

“…In this paper, we answer these questions through the analysis of the relation between modularity and robustness. Unlike previous literature that has analysed this relation by considering mainly a single definition of robustness, we consider two of the most common perspectives: a dynamic robustness to disturbance or change propagation (Ahmad et al, 2013;Braha and Bar-Yam, 2007;Clarkson et al, 2004;Piccolo et al, 2019Piccolo et al, , 2018a; and a topological robustness to physical failures (Albert et al, 2000;Bagrow et al, 2015;Piccolo et al, 2018a;Walsh et al, 2019). In order to obtain results for general systems, we take the perspective of system architecture (Crawley et al, 2016;Steward, 1981) through network science.…”

Research into the design and development process: some themes and an overview of the special issue

“…The use of different approaches reflects (and is reflected in) the types of insights gained, but also may facilitate triangulation of findings. The papers included in this Special Issue use a range of research approaches, including study of design teams in representative situations (Martinec et al 2019;Gralla et al 2019), study of projects in a university context (Menold et al 2019;Li et al 2019), computer simulation of design and development processes (Zhang and Thomson 2019), industry workforce surveys (De Lessio et al 2019), industry interviews and document analysis (Tahera et al 2019) and retrospective analysis of project data (Piccolo et al 2019).…”

“…Their research draws on a case study in a large company that develops complex scientific instruments. Thirdly on the meso-level, Piccolo et al (2019) take a socio-technical perspective on iteration in the design and development process. They argue that, while many researchers consider design iteration from either a technical perspective (e.g.…”