Organizational Linkages Understanding the Productivity Paradox (1994) / Chapter Skim
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9 COORDINATION AS LINKAGE: THE CASE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS
9 COORDINATION AS LINKAGE: THE CASE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS
Pages 214-239
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From page 214... ...
We do not discuss individual-organizational nor group-organizational linkages, although many of the points we make pertain to those linkages as well. Software development is a kind of technical work found in many organizations: the technical team project.
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The United States has more than 7,000 software firms; many other firms participate in the development of software systems (National Science Board, 19891. Business, education, government, and technical endeavors ranging from automated manufacturing to financial transactions to national defense require complex software systems.
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Software development also requires analysis to determine what the software should do; evaluation of alternative platforms; design to shape the basic structure of the programs and their communication with other programs, data bases, and users; tests to ensure that code meets requirements and that users understand the interface; creation of special tools for implementation; hardware and software maintenance procedures; written documentation; and an administrative infrastructure to set priorities on requests for features and to handle feedback from users.
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note, automotive factories, textile mills, and tuna canneries employ hundreds of people to produce their products, yet many run smoothly. Software development is different in that it is more uncertain.
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However, to understand the behavioral research on groups and teams, one must know that behavioral scientists primarily use behavioral rather than economic measures of performance. These may be of several kinds: (1)
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Social psychologists who study small groups have called the transaction costs of coordinating work in a team "process losses" (Steiner, 19721. Three approaches have evolved as ways to reduce process losses and improve coordination: team member selection and training, team design, and team communication.
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Finally, even a group of highly qualified individual workers, placed on a team, may function poorly as a team unless attention is given to their organization as a team. Coordination Through Team Design Organization as a team, or team design, refers to the organizational structure and formal procedures that provide "built-in" solutions to coordination.
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Object-oriented design and programming also directly incorporate team design principles through inheritance. In software engineering, computer-aided software engineering (CASE)
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Another important element in team design is the authority structure, which can be used to resolve disputes and inconsistencies across units. There is some evidence from an extensive comparison of automotive product development teams that significant variance in the authority structure contributes to the superior performance of Japanese automobile design teams over their American and European counterparts.
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analysis of software productivity indicates that productivity due to changes in team design increased by just 7 percent between 1981 and 1986.
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Consensus formation, sharing of know-how, and integration of work outputs create communication demands that if not met at one level tend to surface at others. Team design, while necessary for some purposes, is sometimes a misguided attempt to apply structure and formalization when they are not suitable.
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New communication techniques can reduce the costs of direct communication. Computer networks with electronic mail and bulletin boards that allow for fast but asynchronous conversation permit project members to talk even though they are geographically dispersed or mobile.
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Also, in a complex and interactive project, one person's contribution to the group at any particular moment may seem inconsequential. The public goods problem may increase when uncertainty is high and team design contributes to lack of communication (Macy, 19901.
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\ Less Structure and Formalization (Design) Low Moderate High Communication FIGURE 9-3 Complementarity of communication and team design at low levels of both, and substitution of communication and design at higher levels of both.
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Team design might be a better strategy for coordination than direct communication once a team's plans are in place. Design allows members the most autonomy and time to do individual work.
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Also, little is known about technical teams in organizations that use computer-based technology. Such technology permits organizations to form large, dispersed, and diverse teams working on complex, uncertain, interdependent tasks that would not have been possible in the past.
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For instance, suppose as a result of using electronic mail to coordinate work, dispersed teams also discover ways to mobilize to influence management policy. Here, communication initially intended simply as an efficiency amplifier for a team also has effects on employee participation and organizational politics.
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These interactions can increase information flow between the periphery and the center of the organization and among peripheral workers. In short, while increasing connections through network communication could increase the participation of everyone in principle, peripheral employees are likely to see a relatively greater impact than are central employees (Eveland and Bikson, 1988; Hesse et al., 1990; Huff et al., 19891.
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The unit of analysis in this study was a major car development project; three U.S., eight ~Japanese, and nine European auto companies participated in the research. The researchers collected data from the companies on 29 projects (6 in the United States, 12 in Japan, and 11 in Europe)
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Technical teams use team design and communication to coordinate their work, each of which can be considered a linkage process. Research has contributed much to the understanding of the additive and interactive effects of team design and communication on coordination.
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1987 No silver bullet: Essence and accidents of software engineering. IEEE Computer Society 20:10-18.
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1958 Automation in the auto industry: Some consequences for in-plant social structure. American Sociological Review 23:401-407.
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American Sociological Review 55:809-826.
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1980 Markets, bureaucracies, and clans. Administrative Science Quarterly 25:129140.
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Sims, M.L. 1989 Review of the Suitability of Available Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE)
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Technical report, CMU/SEI-90 TR-14. Software Engineering Institute.
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