Published: Design Your Software Organization Using Conway's Law
- Rule 56 - Conway’s Law: Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.
- Rule 57 - Coplien & Harrison’s Corollary to Conway’s Law: Make sure your organization is compatible with your desired product architecture.
I just finished reading Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. While many of its recommendations are geared towards organizations with a large software development organization, I found a lot of great insight for anyone who is part of developing software with more than one or two other people. Team Topologies relentlessly applies Conway’s Law and the “Reverse Conway Maneuver” to building an organization. Conway’s Law simply states that the systems built by an organization will reflect the way that organization communicates. The “Reverse Conway Maneuver” is an application of Conway’s Law: if you want to build a system with a certain architecture, then you need to build the organization to fit that architecture. I discuss this more in Design Your Software Organization Using Conway’s Law.