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.

Wikipedia: Conway’s Law