Conway's Law
Melvin Conway · 1967
"Conway observed that the structure of any system you design will be a copy of the communication structure of the organization that built it — so you cannot cleanly separate product architecture from org architecture."
Conway wrote in Datamation in 1967: any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure copies its own communication structure. The org chart is the blueprint.
If three teams barely talk, the product will be three modules with awkward interfaces where the teams meet — regardless of what the ideal architecture diagram says. This is not morale advice but a constraint: information that cannot flow between builders cannot be embodied between parts. Classic fixes either mirror the desired architecture in the org (re-org first) or invest in the missing communication edge until it is high-bandwidth enough to let the intended architecture actually emerge.
What does Conway's Law claim about the relationship between organization and product?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- Conway's Law — How Do Committees Invent? (1968) overviewMelvin Conway / Wikipedia
Gall's Law
"Gall's law states that a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked — so starting with a complex spec and hoping it works on day one is the most common path to expensive failure."