The Misalignment of Product Architecture and Organizational Structure in Complex Product Development

TLDR

Product architecture knowledge is embedded in established development organizations’ communication patterns, enabling existing product development but hindering novel architectures, and structured methods to address this gap are lacking. The study integrates product architecture and organizational structure perspectives to examine how design interfaces map onto team communication, investigating boundaries, interface strength, indirect interactions, and modularity to explain mismatches between design interfaces and team interactions. The authors analyze data from a large commercial aircraft engine development process to apply this integrated approach. Results reveal that boundary effects moderate the influence of design interface strength and indirect team interactions, contingent on system modularity, offering managers insights into interdependencies across organizational and functional boundaries.

Abstract

Product architecture knowledge is typically embedded in the communication patterns of established development organizations. While this enables the development of products using the existing architecture, it hinders the organization's ability to implement novel architectures, especially for complex products. Structured methods addressing this issue are lacking, as previous research has studied complex product development from two separate perspectives: product architecture and organizational structure. Our research integrates these viewpoints with a structured approach to study how design interfaces in the product architecture map onto communication patterns within the development organization. We investigate how organizational and system boundaries, design interface strength, indirect interactions, and system modularity impact the alignment of design interfaces and team interactions. We hypothesize and test how these factors explain the existence of the following cases: (1) known design interfaces not addressed by team interactions, and (2) observed team interactions not predicted by design interfaces. Our results offer important insights to managers dealing with interdependences across organizational and functional boundaries. In particular, we show how boundary effects moderate the impact of design interface strength and indirect team interactions, and are contingent on system modularity. The research uses data collected from a large commercial aircraft engine development process.