Analyzing the evolution of software development: From creative chaos to software ecosystems

As a software organization matures and expands, it often evolves through different styles of organization, for example, beginning with creative chaos as a start-up, then introducing disciplined processes to raise quality, and later regaining agility through light-weight practices. Recently, many firms join collaborative networks to develop software products and platforms for a shared market, constituting “Software Ecosystems”. At each stage of evolution, the software organization aims to overcome critical challenges faced in its earlier stages, while balancing business, organizational, social, and technical forces of change. To illustrate how the evolutionary trajectory of a software development firm is shaped by various interacting forces, we draw upon a longitudinal case study taken from the literature. We use the i* strategic actors modeling framework to help analyze the forces that trigger the transition from one organizational configuration to another.