Autonomous, Yet Interdependent: Designing Interfaces across Routine Clusters

This paper examines the process of designing interfaces between routine clusters in a world in flux in which interdependencies are emergent. We reveal that designing interfaces is an endogenous and iterative process of creating and harmonizing interdependencies. In our ethnographic study of the reorganization of agile software development, actors implemented a second routine cluster, which they envisioned to work autonomously. Because the teams shared resources, however, they created interdependencies across the two routine clusters that challenged their autonomy. Our findings contribute to research on routine dynamics, interdependence, and organizations design. They do so, first, by showing how the dynamics of designing interfaces are driven by the emergent nature of interdependencies, which routine participants may endogenously harmonize through routine performances. Second, our findings detail the practices through which “interface design work” is accomplished. Although some of these practices imply transitory variations in routine performances, others change the patterning of interfaces more sustainably. Third, resources play an important role in designing interfaces because making them readily available may require their reconfiguration. Moreover, the pooled interdependencies that flow from shared resources can escalate into more complex types of interdependence.