Week5_Subramanyam et al. (2012)_Aaron

In Search of Efficient Flexibility: Effects of Software Component Granularity on Development Effort, Defects and Customization Effort

The trade-off between efficiency and flexibility in enterprise software production poses a big challenge for firms. New software development paradigms emphasize modular design of complex systems to overcome such challenge. However, there remains little understanding on the use of such software methodologies and associated extent to such trade-offs that can be influenced.

Subramanyam et al. (2012) addressed this gap by investigating the performance outcomes of a model-driven, component-based software development methodology. Specifically, they discuss how a design characteristics of software components, component granularity (with sub-dimensions of code volume, functionality and independence), affects development efficiency (development effort and in-process defects) and flexibility (customization effort).

To test such effects, they utilized a cross-sectional dataset that covers the software development information about 92 business software components of a firm’s enterprise resource planning product. Through 3SLS and SUR analysis, they found that coarse grained components are associated with higher flexibility but are associated with lower development efficiency. Moreover, they found that defects partially mediate the relationship between component granularity and flexibility.

The key implication from this study for software managers and designers who seeks to adopt modular design approaches is that active and judicious management of component granularity resulting from the decomposition of complex enterprise systems is necessary to simultaneously achieve flexibility and efficiency in software development.