Atrophy in Aging Systems: Evidence, Dynamics, and Antidote
Authors: Tiwana, Amrit; Safadi, Hani
Journal: Information Systems Research (2024)
<jats:p> Information systems age ungracefully. Once-modern systems aging into unmaintainable, buggy, meltdown-prone albatrosses is a widespread phenomenon that has received limited research attention. The received wisdom is that degenerative deterioration can be combated with refactoring or architectural improvements to their existing code. We conceptualize this phenomenon as system atrophy, and corroborate its existence by analyzing the code of over 1,300 systems as they underwent 19 million changes over 25 years. Such atrophy in systems has bread-and-butter consequences for organizations that rely on them. We show that it stunts the evolution of systems, makes them more bug-prone, and disengages developers. Atrophy in existing systems also makes it for organizations to implement other new systems because there are harder to integrate with them and cannibalize resources left over after their costlier upkeep. We then develop the idea that little increments in the modularity of their underlying code as a system evolves provide a powerful antidote to such atrophy. However, this antidote gradually loses its potency as a system ages further. Contrary to the popular belief, architectur…