Modularity, learning, and the mitigation of power-law distribution of delay in large-scale technological infrastructure delivery

Paper Details

Authors: Mahitthiburin K.; Andersen K.N.

DOI: 10.12821/ijispm140302

Journal: International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management

Year: 2026

Publisher: Universidade do Minho

Document Type: Article

Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access

Cited by: 0

Abstract

Megaprojects, despite their crucial role in infrastructure delivery, consistently underperform in terms of time, especially when integrating technological innovations. Their reliance on the quantum leap approach struggles because of the temporary nature of project organizations and their inability to transfer experience across endeavors, producing a power-law distribution of delivery delays in which extreme overruns become inevitable. Grounded in the perspectives of system interdependency and self-organized criticality, our results from computer simulation of 50,000 instances show that piecemeal-incremental approaches reduce both average delays and their variability, thereby defying the power-law behavior. The paper offers three propositions for mitigating delays in the delivery of large-scale technological infrastructure: phased delivery, continuous learning from successful practices and experiences, and enabling learning capabilities. © IJISPM

Keywords

learning; megaprojects; modularity; project design; self-organized criticality

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