Quality Improvement and Infrastructure Activity Costs in Software Development: A Longitudinal Analysis

Donald E. Harter () and Sandra A. Slaughter ()
Additional contact information
Donald E. Harter: University of Michigan Business School, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1234
Sandra A. Slaughter: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Management Science, 2003, vol. 49, issue 6, 784-800

Abstract: This study draws upon theories of task interdependence and organizational inertia to analyze the effect of quality improvement on infrastructure activity costs in software development. Although increasing evidence indicates that quality improvement reduces software development costs, the impact on infrastructure activities is not known. Infrastructure activities include services like computer operations, data integration, and configuration management that support software development. Because infrastructure costs represent a substantial portion of firms' information technology budgets, it is important to identify innovations that yield significant cost savings in infrastructure activities. We evaluate quality and cost data collected in nine infrastructure activity centers over 10 years of product development in a major software firm undergoing a quality transformation. Findings indicate that infrastructure activities do benefit from quality improvement. The greatest marginal cost savings are realized in infrastructure activities that are highly interdependent with development and that occur later in the software development life cycle. Organizational inertia influences the rapidity with which the infrastructure activities benefit from higher product quality, especially for the more specialized activities. Finally, our findings suggest that although the savings in infrastructure from quality improvement are substantial, there are diminishing returns to quality improvement in infrastructure activities.

Keywords: Infrastructure Activity Costs; Software Product Development; Software Process Improvement; Software Quality; Capability Maturity Model; Organizational Inertia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.49.6.784.16023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:49:y:2003:i:6:p:784-800

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().