Governance polarities of internal product lines

Abstract

Tension occurs when multiple organizations develop and deliver their own product lines to a single user community. We apply polarity management to the governance of shared architecture, products, and processes for the delivery and management of tens of product lines. These product lines contain hundreds of applications used by thousands of engineers in Boeing Commercial Airplanes. This paper focuses on the use of polarity management to construct extensible governance bodies and processes for the second phase of product line expansion. We define polarity to be “two principles which are both true but conflict.” Polarities are often mistaken to be problems to be solved; however, polarities are held, not solved. Polarity management of the product line infrastructure, a complex customer-supplier network, identifies primary organizational tensions that require management; poorly held polarities cause chaos and failure.