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> There seems to be a correlation between unnecessary product complexity and unnecessary corporate complexity. That's Conway's law. "Any organization that des

> There seems to be a correlation between unnecessary product complexity and unnecessary corporate complexity. That's Conway's law. "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

zeruch 4y ago
Conway's Law is sorely overlooked. It really does have broad applicability in the industry, and sometimes you can use it to evaluate vendors better (read: this product is a bit haphazard...the vendor probably is also. Warning.)
pfarrell 4y ago
Totally agree. The best succinct summary of Conway’s Law I've heard is “you ship your org chart.”
- hinkley 4y ago
  Which is a good way to word it because if your org chart is screwy enough you won't ship at all.
- writeinpencil 4y ago
  I like "the org chart is the asymptote," i.e. it's the best you could possibly do, and your reality will actually be worse. (see Casey Muratori)
notabee 4y ago
Most of the useful insights in the Devops movement can be derived from knowing Conway's law and thinking about organizational patterns holistically. As usual the success stories get cargo culted by others without understanding the principles and thought processes that led there, and usually fail because every organization is different and has different needs. Change is hard. This will happen with every shiny new movement like Devops or Agile. I'm sure we're due for a new one soon which will follow the same path, since people seem to be admitting that Devops has problems on here more and more. Will that cause deeper reflection? Probably not for many orgs, because soon some consultants will dream up a new brand of silver bullet to slay the immortal monster of organizational dysfunction and that's much more exciting.

zeruch 4y ago

Conway's Law is sorely overlooked. It really does have broad applicability in the industry, and sometimes you can use it to evaluate vendors better (read: this product is a bit haphazard...the vendor probably is also. Warning.)

pfarrell 4y ago

Totally agree. The best succinct summary of Conway’s Law I've heard is “you ship your org chart.”

hinkley 4y ago
Which is a good way to word it because if your org chart is screwy enough you won't ship at all.
writeinpencil 4y ago
I like "the org chart is the asymptote," i.e. it's the best you could possibly do, and your reality will actually be worse. (see Casey Muratori)

notabee 4y ago

Most of the useful insights in the Devops movement can be derived from knowing Conway's law and thinking about organizational patterns holistically. As usual the success stories get cargo culted by others without understanding the principles and thought processes that led there, and usually fail because every organization is different and has different needs. Change is hard. This will happen with every shiny new movement like Devops or Agile. I'm sure we're due for a new one soon which will follow the same path, since people seem to be admitting that Devops has problems on here more and more. Will that cause deeper reflection? Probably not for many orgs, because soon some consultants will dream up a new brand of silver bullet to slay the immortal monster of organizational dysfunction and that's much more exciting.