Conway’s law
publish From 2023-11-01. Part of Musings on tech.
Conway’s law comes from computer programmer Melvin Conway, who wrote in his book (paraphrased):
Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.
— Melvin Conway, 1967
A decade later, his aphorism evolved to:
The structure of any system is isomorphic to the structure of the organization.
— Edward Yourdon and Larry Constantine, 1979
Then, even more bluntly:
If you have four groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a 4-pass compiler.
— Eric Raymond, 1996
It’s important to remember this when building teams.