Myths of Software Management: Conway’s Law

Conway’s law describes the link between communication structure of organizations and the systems they design. It is named after the computer scientist and programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1967: “[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

This law is grounded in the reasoning that for a product to operate correctly, it is imperative that the authors and designers of its constituent parts engage in dialogue to guarantee the compatibility of those components. As a result, the technical architecture of a system will mirror the social delimitations of the organizations responsible for its creation, leading to challenges in communication across those delineations. In colloquial terms, it means complex products end up “shaped like” the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. Conway wrote the law primarily in the field of software architecture, though it applies to most technical fields.

In this LeSS Conference, Craig had a talk about Conway’s Law itself and how people interpreted it. He dived into the original paper and point out that the common interpretations are not actually what it says in the original paper.

Video producer: https://less.works/