Canonical · Design & Engineering · Paper

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."

The idea

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.

Why it works

The takeaway — recall it first

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."

John Gall · BookContinue→