Complexity is a much analyzed, much debated, much measured property of softwareintensive products. From a strategic point of view, complexity has implications for the development and evolution of software-intensive products. In this issue of Strategic Software Engineering I will consider multiple views of complexity, sources of complexity and actions that manage complexity.

The decision-making process in strategic planning is often too complex to be handled by conventional methods. Strategic planning problems (building new plans, new product planning, etc.) belong to the class of problems called ill-structured by H. Simon. They involve a decomposition of the main problem into a set of subproblems, a reasoning process at the subproblem level, and then a coordinated...

The paper presents an algorithm for multi-agent strategic modeling (MASM). The method applies domain knowledge and transforms sequences of basic multi-agent actions into a set of strategic action descriptions in the form of graph paths, agent actions, roles and corresponding rules. The rules, constructed by machine learning, enrich the graphical strategic patterns, which are presented in the fo...

Strategic urban and territorial planning typically suggests general lines, directions and strategic objectives for spatial, social and economical development of a city or a region with 15–20 years horizon. It also proposes an interrelated set of actions and projects which need to be undertaken and implemented in order to reach these strategic objectives. However, it is frequently unclear how an...

This paper studies the strategic interaction between a monopolistic seller of an information product and a set of potential buyers that compete in a downstream market. Our analysis illustrates that the nature and intensity of competition among the information provider’s customers play first-order roles in determining her optimal strategy. We show that when the customers view their actions as st...

We provide an evolutionary foundation to evidence that in some situations humans maintain optimistic or pessimistic attitudes towards uncertainty and are ignorant to relevant aspects of the environment. Players in strategic games face Knightian uncertainty about opponents’ actions and maximize individually their Choquet expected utility. Our Choquet expected utility model allows for both an opt...

In the highly competitive nowadays markets, many companies actions assume the project form. In special, Information Technology (IT) projects assume great importance, enabling the dynamic actions that organisations need (Porter, 2001; Tapscott, 2001). However, IT applications assume different roles, from operational support to strategic, according to companies’ strategies and operations, besides...