Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
Quote of the Week 48 " Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations . " ― Melvin Conway ( Conway's Law ) In short : " The product of any group reflects the structure of the group. " Even shorter: " Architecture follows Organization " Triggered by the reference to a variant of Conway's Law in Fred Brooks's renowned book " T he Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering " (see quote of last week for a reference to Brooks's Law ). The original quote was used by Martin Fowler in his noteworthy October 2022 article on the same subject: " Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure . " Fowler states: "Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you