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Information Systems and Applied Computer Sciences

Information Systems Management Group

  1.  University of bamberg
  2. Faculties
  3. Information Systems and Applied Computer Sciences
  4. Subject groups
  5. Information Systems
  6. Information Systems Management Group
  7. Teaching
  8. Thesis Writing

Thesis Topics

Thank you for your interest in writing a Bachelor's or Master's thesis at the Chair of Information Systems Management. Below you find the current list of our research topics. Unless otherwise noted, thesis topics are open to Bachelor and Master students, can start immediately and should be preferably written in English language. Get in touch with us ideally 8 weeks before your intended start.

If you think one of these topics sounds promising, please use the registration form at the end of the page.

Important for bachelor students: Experience in scientific work in the field of IS/MIS is required, i.e. successful completion of the WAWI module and/or successful participation in an ISM seminar.

 

Topics

Revisiting Conway's Law: Examining the Impact of Organizational Structure on Software Architecture and its Development Process

Conway's Law asserts that the architecture of software systems mirrors the communication structures of the organizations that design them (Conway, 1968). For companies aiming to achieve modular, scalable, and efficient software architectures, aligning their organizational structures and processes with architectural goals is both a challenge and an opportunity.

This master’s thesis investigates how organizational factors, such as team structures, collaboration patterns, and communication flows, influence the modularity and evolution of software architecture. The study will focus on real-world organizational settings, studying the development process of modular software systems to identify best practices and pitfalls.

What practices enhance or hinder the modularity of software systems? How does evolving software modularity feedback affect organizational processes? Can Conway’s hypothesis be observed?

Methodology:
The thesis shall employ a qualitative case analysis approach.

Language of the thesis: English or German (preferably English)

Getting started with literature:

  • Conway, M. E. (1968). How do committees invent?. Datamation, 14(4), 28–31.
  • Haki, K., & Legner, C. (2021). The mechanics of enterprise architecture principles. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 22(5), p. 1334–1375.
  • MacCormack, A., Baldwin, C., & Rusnak, J. (2012). Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis. Research Policy, 41(8), 1309–1324.

Supervisor: Elias Grewe

Assessing the Role of GenAI generated Code in Due Diligence - Implications for Mergers & Acquisitions

Tools that leverage GenAI technology have been shown to enhance user productivity in content creation tasks. Noy and Zhang (2023) found that writers using OpenAI’s ChatGPT produced content more quickly while maintaining improved overall quality. Similarly, GitHub's Copilot, marketed by Microsoft, claims to increase software development speed by 55.8% (Peng et al., 2023). 

GitHub Copilot is powered by Codex, a large language model trained on publicly available GitHub repositories (Chen et al., 2021). It assists software developers in two primary ways: through a conversational interface, similar to ChatGPT, which answers software engineering queries, and through advanced code completion mechanisms that streamline coding tasks and also generate complete parts of software code. 

While tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and other GenAI models are being rapidly adopted by software developers worldwide, their impact on due diligence (DD) and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) remains unclear. Solutions such as Sema (Sema Software) enable organizations to scan codebases for AI-generated code to assess potential risks. However, the specific risks and benefits of GenAI-generated code in the context of DD and M&A, particularly its influence on firm valuation, are not yet well understood. 

This master's thesis examines the impact of AI-generated code on the M&A process, specifically its implications during due diligence. It aims to evaluate the potential risks, opportunities, and overall effects of AI-generated code in acquisitions. The key questions explored include: How can AI-generated code positively influence due diligence? And, in what cases might its use pose risks that could jeopardize an acquisition?

Methodology:
Case-study

Language of the thesis: English

Getting started with literature:

Supervisor: David Rochholz

Registration

Application form - Theses