I'm sure that you encountered it. Information silos are the de facto example of Conway's Law. For example, maybe the sales team for a regional office wants to

I'm sure that you encountered it. Information silos are the de facto example of Conway's Law. For example, maybe the sales team for a regional office wants to run reports, but doesn't have access to corporate HQ's MIS. The sales team's SYSTEM is constrained by the ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION STRUCTURE. If the regional sales team can lobby successfully for access, they'll be able to hook in to corporate. If not, the sales team will roll their own MIS as a workaround and create a mini-empire. The result provides inferences about the org's communication structure. I typically think of what the ideal solution is, then compare that to the actual systems architecture. From that systems footprint, you can usually tell which dept.'s communicate well and which departments have disproportionate power.