Resources Center

Silverthread Resources Center

Access expert insights, success stories, white papers, and multimedia content—everything you need to guide smarter software modernization decisions.

Insights

insights

What You Should Consider Before Beginning an Application Modernization Project

There are seven suggested strategies when modernizing an application, especially when...

insights

Viewing Technical Debt from a Financial Perspective

What is Technical Debt? Technical debt is the creation, either purposefully or not, of imperfect or unsound code which increases...

insights

The Importance of Modularity in Software Security and Applying Dependency Analysis for Code Security

In today's interconnected digital landscape, software security has become a paramount concern for organizations across various industries.

insights

Applying the Software Development Process: Separation of Concerns with Silverthread's CodeMRI®Suite

In the realm of software engineering, Separation of Concerns (SoC) stands as a transformative methodology,...

insights

Getting started with data-driven software management

Regain control by measuring productivity and quality to drive results. Why measure software economics? If you can’t measure...

insights

Primer on design quality, the (more important) half of steering software projects

Durable business agility = product agility * process agility. You need both. Process measures are not enough Most software leadership...

insights

More honest earned value management of software projects

Process measures are easy to spin and game. Product measures are more honest. Software systems...

insights

Health of the forest does not equal the health of the individual trees

Practitioners and leadership must objectively understand both code quality and design quality. The...

insights

Is your software healthy? Process measures tell only part of the story

Quantifying design quality helps to steer projects and improve software economics. Software projects are complex and...

insights

How honest are your software measures?

Process measures are easy to spin and game. Product measures are more honest. Software systems...

insights

Quantify design quality. It is the crux of instrumenting a lean transformation.

Business agility is as much a function of architecture as it is of process. Are you wasting too much time in overhead work?...

insights

Play Offense: How to Pull the Trigger on a Software Refactor or Rewrite

Measuring design quality can help you act decisively and manage change.

insights

Gain control of your software portfolio

Use ROI and risk-based decision making to drive results Executive summary Across a large portfolio...

insights

Silverthread predictive analytics and benchmarking

Modeling the impact of technical health on software economics Technical health and its impact on software economics The health of...

insights

Steering software projects more predictably

Measuring design quality provides breakthrough insight for steering. Software delivery outcomes have...

insights

Is your code structured as you intended? Probably not.

Hidden and unintentional complexity causes waste and overhead. Identify architectural impurities early and consistently...

insights

Improving Software Health for Economic Impact

Dan Sturtevant is CEO and co-founder of Silverthread, the leader in software economics helping...

insights

Rethinking Quality Metaphors: From Technical Debt to Technical Health

Technical health doesn’t happen by accident. Like the human body, it requires regular attention and care.

insights

You Can't be agile with Agile™ Process Alone

Walker Royce once told me that if you have Agile™ process but not an agile product - you just "make crap faster." True agility—the ability

insights

The Blame Game: Why Projects Fail and What Really Causes It

The blame game often targets people first, processes second, and technical health last—but the reality is the opposite

Case Studies

case study

March 2025

A success story: Driving software agility and cyber-resilience at the DoD

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case study

January 2025

From “Go Pound Sand” to “Tell Me More”: How to Convince Your CFO to Invest in Technical Health

case study

March 2023

Improving Software Health for Economic Impact

case study

December 2024

Driving Modernization Strategy: Government Agency's Software Portfolio

case study

December 2024

How CodeMRI Discovery and Silverthread Consulting Helped Save a Critical DoD Program

case study

December 2024

Enabling Cloud Transformation: How Silverthread’s CodeMRI Suite Empowered Amadeus

case study

January 2025

From Delays to Dollars: How a Camera Company Used CodeMRI® to Restore Market Leadership

case study

January 2025

Finding the Root Cause of a Billion-Dollar Failure – and Preventing the Next One

Publications

publication

Economics of Iterative Software Development, The: Steering Toward Better Business Results

Walker Royce

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Software Project Management: A Unified Framework

Walker Royce

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The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View

Carlliss Baldwin & Jason Woodward

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Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architectures: A Flexibility Analysis

Roert Lagerstrom, Carliss Baldwin, Alam MacCormack, David Dreyfus

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Visualizing and Measuring the Enterprise Architecture: An Exploratory Biopharma Case

Roert Lagerstrom, Carliss Baldwin, Alam MacCormack, David Dreyfus

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How Maintainable is the Firefox Codebase

Ali Almossawi

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The Impact of Software Design Structure on Product Maintenance Costs and Measurement of Economic Benefits of Product Redesign

Andrei Akaikine

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Trade-offs Between Productivity and Quality in Selecting Software Development Practices

Alan MacCormack, Chris Kemerer, Michael Cusumano, Bill Crandall

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Exploring the Structure of Complex Software Designs: An Empirical Study of Open Source Designs: An Empirical Study of Open Source and Proprietary Code

Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, Carliss Y. Baldwin

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Empirical Analysis of Software Refactoring Motivation and Effects

Sean Gilliland

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Evolution of the Firefox Codebase

Ali Almossawi

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Architecting Out Software Intellectual Property Lock-In: A Method to Advance the Efficacy of BPP

Chris Berardi

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Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis

Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, Carliss Baldwin

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Modular Design and Option Value: System Architecture and Developer Productivity

Alan MacCormack & Dan Sturtevant

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System Design and the Cost of Architectural Complexity

Dan Sturtevant

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The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence From The Software Industry

Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, Carliss Baldwin

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Organizing Design for Distributed Innovation

Carliss Baldwin

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Technical Debt: The Cost of Doing Nothing

Austin Page

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Hidden Structure: Using Network Methods to Map System Architecture

Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak

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Design Rules: How Technology Shapes Organizations (Volume 2)

Carliss Baldwin

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Design Rules: The Power of Modularity (Volume 1)

Carliss Baldwin & Kim Clark

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Creating and Managing the Agile Enterprise

Alan MacCormack

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Improving Software Health for Economic Impact

Dan Sturtevant

publication

Modular Architectures Make You Agile in the Long Run

Dan Sturtevant & Mik Kersten

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Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect Related Activity

Alan MacCormack & Dan Sturtevant

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Organizing “spaghetti” software so it can be easily modified

Zach Winn

White Papers

white paper

Customer Use Case: Informed Decision Making through Custom ROI Tool

white paper

Customer Use Case: Translating Code Health into Economic Indicators

white paper

Improving Software Health for Economic Impact

white paper

Modular Architectures Make You Agile in the Long Run

Webinars

webinar

Analyzing Large & Complex Platforms: a Look at Linux

Dan Sturtevant & Dave Allan

webinar

Take Back Control of Your Software Systems and Drive Results

Alan MacCormack & Dan Sturtevant

webinar

Designing Software Platforms for Innovation and Profitability

Dan Sturtevant & Amadeus North America

webinar

Why Do Software Projects Succeed or Fail? Quantifying the Cost of Complexity

Dan Sturtevant

webinar

Wiring the Winning Software Organization: How and Why Modular Architectures Drive Results

Gene Kim & Dan Sturtevant