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The OP is describing Conway's Law, and shows that half the battle is being able to define the problem space in a way that minimises communication and maximises
by pm 6y ago
The OP is describing Conway's Law, and shows that half the battle is being able to define the problem space in a way that minimises communication and maximises utility. As such, it could be inferred that beginning with a monolithic organisation, and splitting off a new team at the appropriate time when a useful problem space had been defined could be a possible best practice, assuming the organisation was flexible enough.
Food for thought, at least.
- kislayverma 6y agoThat is well put, and I'm going steal some of those words in the follow-up I'm writing. I essentially feel that teams should grow when tech and process initiatives have led to creation of a whole new problem space that can be explored independently. Consciously applying Conway's to identify communication boundaries sounds like a good way to get there.
- pm 6y agoThanks! Indeed, it's the interfaces that are hardest to define. I don't know a good heuristic to determine it I'm afraid - everything I've ever done was on intuition.
- hinkley 6y agoI think in general we underestimate the power of the B-tree, and this is but another example.