Related papers: Performance Variability and Project Dynamics
Resolving major societal challenges, such as stagnated economic growth or wasted resources, heavily relies on successful project delivery. However, projects are notoriously hard to deliver successfully, partly due to their interconnected…
Randomly-assembled dynamical systems are theoretically predicted to be unstable upon crossing a critical threshold of complexity, as first shown by May. Yet, empirical complex systems exhibit remarkable stability, indicating the presence of…
Coordinated collective action refers to the synchronized action of agents towards achieving a predefined set of goals. Such activity is at the core of a wide range of social challenges, from organizational dynamics to team performance.…
We present a detailed model of collaboration in communities of practice and we examine its dynamical consequences for the group as a whole. We establish the existence of a novel mechanism that allows the community to naturally adapt to…
Engineering projects are notoriously hard to complete on-time, with project delays often theorised to propagate across interdependent activities. Here, we use a novel dataset consisting of activity networks from 14 diverse, large-scale…
Requirements are found to change in various ways during the course of a project. This can affect the process in widely different manner and extent. Here we present a case study where-in we investigate the impact of requirement volatility…
Automated builds are integral to the Continuous Integration (CI) software development practice. In CI, developers are encouraged to integrate early and often. However, long build times can be an issue when integrations are frequent. This…
We argue that the coordination of the activities of individual complex agents enables a system to develop and sustain complexity at a higher level. We exemplify relevant mechanisms through computer simulations of a toy system, a coupled map…
Modern agile software projects are subject to constant change, making it essential to re-asses overall delay risk throughout the project life cycle. Existing effort estimation models are static and not able to incorporate changes occurring…
We study the performance of general dynamic matching models. This model is defined by a connected graph, where nodes represent the class of items and the edges the compatibilities between items. Items of different classes arrive one by one…
Collective dynamics result from interactions among noisy dynamical components. Examples include heartbeats, circadian rhythms, and various pattern formations. Because of noise in each component, collective dynamics inevitably involve…
In ergodic physical systems, time-averaged quantities converge (for large times) to their ensemble-averaged values. Large deviation theory describes rare events where these time averages differ significantly from the corresponding ensemble…
Most complex networks serve as conduits for various dynamical processes, ranging from mass transfer by chemical reactions in the cell to packet transfer on the Internet. We collected data on the time dependent activity of five natural and…
Temporal networks model how the interaction between elements in a complex system evolve over time. Just like complex systems display collective dynamics, here we interpret temporal networks as trajectories performing a collective motion in…
Complex problems often require coordinated group effort and can consume significant resources, yet our understanding of how teams form and succeed has been limited by a lack of large-scale, quantitative data. We analyze activity traces and…
Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…
We show that fluid organizations display higher levels of cooperation than attainable by groups with either a fixed social structure or lacking one altogether. By moving within the organization, individuals cause restructurings that…
Real-world systems can be strongly influenced by time delays occurring in self-coupling interactions, due to unavoidable finite signal propagation velocities. When the delays become significantly long, complicated high-dimensional phenomena…
In seeking to understand the processes enacted during software development, an increasing number of studies have mined software repositories. In particular, studies have endeavored to show how teams resolve software defects. Although much…
Many dynamical phenomena display a cyclic behavior, in the sense that time can be partitioned into units within which distributional aspects of a process are homogeneous. In this paper, we introduce a class of models - called conjugate…